The world is changing. From seismic political upheaval to climate change, an exploding population, the rise of social media and, of course, technology, the speed of that change has been unprecedented. This revolution means how we live our lives is also changing, leading to a huge transformation in the very fabric of our houses. We don’t have to look into the future to see a world in which rooms are controlled by our smartphones, a world where our own home deliver care to those in need and where the laundry can be done without the clothes even leaving the wardrobe – it is already here.

The Caring Smart Home

Already, courtesy of Amazon Echo and Google Home, we live in an era when personal assistants can talk to us. Imagine, however, a home with sensors in all rooms, where technology in the bathroom is testing your urine, a home which, through wearable tech, picks up on the people entering it and adjusts the temperature and lighting to their needs and moods. Your home will be your doctor, your personal assistant, your companion. Of course, with the ubiquitous collection of data, privacy and security issues will be high on the agenda – the walls will almost literally have eyes.

It could also be your carer in old age or infirmity. Scientists like Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn of University of Hertfordshire, are attempting to develop homes with robotic helpers that could enable old people to continue independent living for longer. Dautenhahn has already created such an experimental “robot house” in an ordinary-looking home in a suburban area of Hatfield, dotted with sensors and populated by a number of different robots to which the sensors feed information about the movements of people in the house. She hopes such a home might help the old or disabled to stay independent at home. “What you really want is a system that can 24/7 watch over people, learn about their habits, their behaviours and might be able to track if they seem to be eating less, or become slower in walking, can also maybe identify a medical problem earlier,” she says.

Digital decor

In the smart home of the future, our walls are likely to be covered with digital wallpaper which we can alter whenever we like. The Future Living report by Samsung Smartthings predicts that we will 3D print our furniture, and that it will be possible to “upload houses onto a ‘Domestic Facebook’ in which people will proudly share their homes like they currently share their pictures”. From there they will be able to “reprint” aspects of each other’s homes.

The off-grid eco home

Last year a contest was held inviting architects and visionaries to submit concepts for an environmentally friendly house to sit below the famous Hollywood sign in LA. The winner was a shiny blob-like construction which had the semblance of a deflating ball. Ambivalent House, as it is called, has an outer husk that spins, and which generates energy through the shimmering solar-panelled skin which covers it. Crucially, it is designed to allow the occupants to live off-the-grid, generating their own electricity. Off-grid, energy-generating homes like these represent one of the hottest areas of architectural design currently – and you don’t have to wait to get one. One such design is already available for under £68,000, the Ecocapsule, a small egg-shaped home, powered by a wind turbine and solar energy.

Future homes, however, will not just rely on wind or sun to power them. According to the Samsung Smartthings Future Living report, the homes of the future may also run on waste and become fully-fledged recycling systems themselves. The report describes future homes in which our wastes are used to create fuel and electricity through a process called “microbial fuel cell stacks”. Through this, plastic waste, toilet waste and other materials will, as bacteria work on them, generate both electricity and clean water. “Power,” says the report, “will be stored in each home through efficient lithium-ion batteries, taking everyone off the grid and removing the need for large power plants, thus reducing nuclear waste and carbon emissions.”

The amphibious house

Climate change predictions and current flooding in numerous parts of the world have triggered architects to develop so-called amphibious homes that can deal with either being on land, or, when the water rises, floating. Among these is the Baca Architects floating home, which they developed as a prototype in response to a competition last year to find a solution to London’s housing crisis. Perched on an island in the Thames, its base sits in a dry dock and is built like the hull of a ship. Robert Barker, one of the architects behind the house, and also co-author of a book, Aquatecture: Buildings And Cities Designed To Live And Work With Water, said: “Conventional wisdom has always been about running away from water and building big barriers to defend against the risk of flooding. But with rising sea levels and increasing flood risk, we’re going to have to learn to embrace water and use it to our advantage.”

The self-cleaning house

Who wouldn’t want a house where you don’t have to clean the bath or toilet and the laundry is carried out automatically? Actually Frances Gabe, an inventor born in 1915 in the United States already went most of the way there decades ago with a house she constructed. At the push of a series of buttons, jets of soapy water would wash the entire room – then a blower dried whatever water hadn’t run down the sloping floors into the drains. Her sink, shower and toilets were capable of cleaning themselves.

These are ideas whose time is coming. The notion that our houses might be self-cleaning, or in some way easier to clean is also being explored across the design industry. For instance, LG has already created a wardrobe fitted with a clothes care system that refreshes clothes using its TrueSteam technology, a hot steam spray that is said to get rid of 99.9 per cent of germs and bacteria. And, last year at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Japanese manufacturer, Toto, made a splash with their self-cleaning loos, which are designed with an intelligent system which washes and dries the user, then cleans and sanitises itself with electrolysed water afterwards.

Technology is already delivering a range of “self-clean” surfaces that use titanium dioxide, meaning water or even rain on outdoor surfaces will wash the dirt away.

Changing Rooms

We are already seeing the rise of a phenomenon which IKEA head of design, Marcus Engeman, has described as “the fluid home”. “Traditionally,” he has said, “when people thought of their houses, they thought of them almost mathematically. A sofa plus a television equals a living room. A bed and a set of drawers equals a bedroom. But in a more urban world, where more people are living in smaller spaces … what makes one room a living room and another room a bedroom is becoming a lot more fluid.”

Adaptability in other words, is going to be a key feature in many homes of the future: moveable walls, folding units, hidden storage, multi-purpose furniture. For instance, in Madrid, designer Yolanda Pila created a revolutionary approach, using moving walls and storage units that ran on tracks, to convert her grandparents’ tiny apartment into a space that could contain five different rooms, just not at the same time.

Earlier this year, Amazing Spaces presenter George Clarke unveiled his innovative “rotating home” at the Ideal Home Show. Powered by wheelchair motors bought from eBay, it’s a £50,000 home which delivers four rooms in one space, encased within a 3.5-tonne, 4.3-metre aluminium drum. But that’s nothing on what we can expect in the more distant future, according to the Samsung Smartthings Future Living Report. The report predicts still greater malleability “as living space in cities becomes scarce”. Our homes and interiors, it says, will evolve into “hyper-flexible spaces”. “Rooms will serve different functions, walls, floors, ceilings will have embedded technology which will allow them to change position depending on the activity … These smart walls will be able to change their own shape in 3D by using small responsive actuators pushing and pulling a flexible skin – creating temporary seats or shelves.”

The Shared kitchen

Surveys and reports in recent years have shown that we are spending less time cooking, and eating more takeaway and delivery meals. In cities, where space is limited, the kitchen, which till recently had been the centre of our homes, is getting smaller. We are seeing a transformation, in other words, in our relationship to this room. Last year, Barcelona-based architect Anna Puigjaner received an award from Harvard for her project, “Kitchenless”. The title, and the concept, are, she says, provocative. What she is really interested in is communal living.

In fact, her proposition was not for entirely kitchenless homes, but individual living spaces with tiny kitchenettes, that are also part of a shared complex and are connected to communal kitchen spaces. Her point is that we are becoming used to the idea of a sharing economy, of using, in the “smart” age, services rather than owning things. Puigjaner says she already shares a car and a workspace. Why not share a kitchen and its services?

“The idea is that we have a small kitchen and then another that is shared with other people. It’s not us that have to clean it, not us who have to cook in it – we just go there for eating when we need to. You can eat or cook with others or not. Sharing works when you want to do it. You have to have the freedom to do it or not.”