A brilliant example of an object becoming an indispensable part of human life which didn’t even exist a few decades ago is the case of mobile phones and more specifically the smart phones of today. Even the thought of losing our smart phones or leaving them behind while we leave home makes us jittery! So if smart phones are our today, what is our tomorrow? What is that object of future that would be based on an old premise but stuffed with so much modernity and technology that it would become indispensable to our existence? Quite possibly – Smart Homes!
The Homes of the Future:
The feature that all developers and architects of the world are working towards is to live in an eco-efficient environment in future including one’s home. Yes, an eco-efficient home, addressing the twin aspects of carbon footprints and hence sustainability, conceptualized wholly on the renewal energy path is just what the world might be progressing towards with time.
Not only would homes be energy efficient with zero carbon footprints but should generate its own energy requirements and if possible generate more. What we are talking about is a gradual shift from low energy consuming to energy generating homes, from no-cost to generating-money homes! Also, with giant leaps in consumer technology a fully automated hi-tech home with a single point control to anything and everything in it is what the future beholds! Hence, the two concepts that the homes of the future look to be based on are Home Automation and Sustainability. Here’s how…
Home Automation:
Home Automation is where the Smart phones come in. The automated home concept, intelligently syncs your home to a Smart Phone or in other words syncs all your residential processes and operations in a single point controlled system. Having an all-in-one aspects synced home, grants you remote access and the power to control everything within from wherever and whenever.
Imagine switching on lights, controlling the fire place, switching off the home theatre system or other appliances to even setting curtains and blinds remotely from a single point of connection. All of these features are becoming readily available with some builders. Amazing would probably be an understatement!
Sustainability:
The second and more important issue at hand is the transformation of residences of tomorrow towards using renewable energy sources, designed on the optimum electricity and power consumption mode and working towards a zero cost, eco-friendly, zero carbon home of the future. And this is not a farfetched idea as some of us are already proving quite successfully that it can be done. On this note, mention must be made of Russell White of Field Farm, Northorp who revamped almost 40 homes that currently have no running cost whatsoever and infact are generating income from their renewable energy sources. His own residence generates 7000 kW electricity annually providing what is necessary to him in his house and feeding the rest back to the power grid.
Every square inch of his zero carbon, hi-tech, eco-friendly home has been designed keeping optimum power consumption factor in mind. Starting from zero heat wasting ventilation system to under floor electric ribbons that eliminates the use of radiators, his home screams innovation from everywhere.
So, the homes of the future or the fully automated Smart Homes as we would like to call it, would be an example of development solely on the sustainability model, a building that would generate its own heat, its own electricity and even money! Emphasis on being eco-friendly coupled with the focus on consumer technology towards full automation and control would be the journey of the world from Smart Phones to Smart Homes.
