Future Home: Trends, Innovations and Disruptors in Housing Design

Global pandemics, smart technologies, demographics and climate change are just some of the external disruptors that may impact the home’s evolution over the next ten years. Future Home provides a comprehensive ’horizon scan’ of what our homes may be like approximately ten years from now, by looking for early signs of potentially important developments through a systematic examination of trends, innovations and disruptors. The authors consider what aspects of the home are likely to remain constant and what aspects may change beyond all recognition and if changes are predicted, what form they may take and, most importantly, what this means for design professionals. Exploring areas of buildings and technology, people and delivery, each chapter addresses the catalysts, natures and responses to these changes. This book provides an overview of the future home that will be essential reading for designers, policy-makers and homeowners alike.

Dr Alejandro Moreno-Rangel is a Lecturer in Building Performance Evaluation and Net Zero Design at the University of Strathclyde. Alejandro’s research interests include natural material construction, building performance evaluation, net zero carbon buildings and their impact on health - particularly on asthma and other respiratory diseases -, the indoor environment - indoor air quality (IAQ) & thermal comfort. These research foci help him to understand the occupants’ health & behaviour to create healthy homes, particularly through the Passivhaus Standard. Alejandro is also interested in low-cost sensors and technologies for building performance evaluation and housing retrofit energy with a particular focus on deep energy retrofit.

Professor Ruth Conroy Dalton is a British architect, author, and Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University. She has authored or contributed to more than 200 publications. She is a world-leading authority on the overlap between architecture and spatial cognition. As a licensed architect, she has worked for Foster and Partners and Sheppard Robson Architects and key projects upon which she has worked include the Carré d’Art de Nîmes, in France and the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia, in Spain. She has taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Northumbria University, where she was Head of Department for the Architecture and Built Environment Department, the first woman to hold the post. In 2019 she became the Inaugural/Founding Professor of Architecture and the first Head of the Lancaster School of Architecture at Lancaster University, before returning to Northumbria University in 2022.