Houses of the future - here and now
Robots may not be here yet, but techno-features are now commonplace in luxury houses – and coming soon to a home near you.
Those prophets of the Sixties who predicted the homes of the future would find much to be disappointed by in the average house today.
We still dress ourselves, cook our own meals and vacuum our own dusty floors. Where are the robot servants we were promised?
They’re arriving, is the answer. They’re just invisible. Unseen, digital and electronic, these robots are beginning to operate quietly and reliably behind walls, beneath floorboards and under the very foundations of our homes.
What’s more, these invisible maids and butlers don’t just do the normal household chores. They are domestic engineers, who will help control exactly how much fuel your house consumes, in which rooms and at what times of day.
They will raise the blinds in the morning and switch the lights off at night, at exactly the time you tell them. And they will turn on the heating only in the rooms you are occupying.
At the touch of a button from you on your way out, they will simultaneously lock every door and window in the house.
“This whole phenomenon is driven by the desire for energy conservation,” says designer John Lees, who has worked for clients ranging from Rod Stewart to former investment bank Salomon Brothers.
“I’m designing £100 million houses, yet my clients still want me to install the absolute latest energy saving technology. They are all too aware that fuel is going to get more expensive in years to come.”
The same applies to the rest of us. Whereas we once thought nothing of leaving the lights on all over the house, even those immune to the planet’s problems are being forced, by the size of our gas and electricity bills, to cut our carbon consumption.
“The energy-saving features that we are just starting to see today will become commonplace,” says Guy Meacock, of Prime Purchase, the house-finding wing of Savills.
“An all-off single light switch by the front and back door, groundwater collection tanks, ground-source heat pumps. And greater use of remote access for security systems, so you can monitor your home from anywhere in the world.”
All of which means that instead of whisking our guests past the plant-and-boiler room, we will take them in, and proudly show them around.
“I call it the Bismarck Room,” says John Lees, who has installed 21st century technology into his 15th century manor house.
“You have all these neatly numbered pipes in a long line, just like the engine room of a big ship. If you’re taking someone around your house, you definitely take them to see your Bismarck Room.”
If you want to see what a home of the future looks like, you don’t need the Tardis, just a trip to Torquay.
Here, overlooking the sparkling south Devon sea, stands Sunset, the cliff-top home of housing developer Charles Martin.
On upmarket Ilsham Marine Drive, he and his wife, Sandi, have created a home that is definitely more 2021 than 2011.
Aside from the whirlpool baths and the surround-sound home theatre, they have waterproof television sets in the bathroom and ceiling recesses that change colour.
There are also enormous picture windows that not only clean themselves, but switch from clear to opaque at the touch of a button.
Best of all, though, the Martins never have to change vacuum cleaner bags. “We’ve installed a system called Vacuduct, whereby you plug your suction nozzle into a wall socket, and it vacuums up all the dust, then transfers it straight to a bin in the garage,” says Charles.
“The dust travels via internal ducts, so you don’t get it all swirling around the room.” And that’s just the start. There’s a passive ventilation unit which takes out stale air, a heat exchange unit which brings in fresh air and warms it up.
And, for those who don’t fancy going up the futuristic glass staircase, there are two separate lifts (sea views from the roof terrace). Oh, and there’s a central control system programmed to switch the lights on, put the blinds up and illuminate the palm trees at a fixed time every night.
“What Sandbanks is to Poole, i.e. the most exclusive address in the area, so Ilsham Marine Drive is to Torquay and Torbay,” says Charles, who is selling Sunset for £1.8 million (01392 427500; www.wilkinsongrant.co.uk). “We wanted to make this house a Rolls-Royce in terms of technology.”
Mind you, that’s pretty much what’s expected up at the top end of the market, where the latest hi-tech gadgets are not so much s’il vous plaît as de rigueur.
“When I was building my house a couple of years ago, I bit the bullet, and installed colour CCTV, which was quite expensive at the time,” says James Wyatt, an estate agent who is selling his six-bedroom home in Virginia Water, Surrey, for £5.75 million (01344 843 000; www.bartonwyatt.co.uk).
“Now I’m glad I did. If I was trying to sell this place with black-and-white CCTV today, prospective buyers would assume I was cutting corners.”
Though they might not think so after a guided tour. Every room in the Wyatt household has up to six tiny wall sockets, designed to accommodate a far greater range of computer and Wi-Fi connections than is now standard.
“Over the next 10 years, we are all going to get a lot greedier with our data requirements,” says James. “If we want to stream films on demand from the internet in HD, for example, that’s a very data-hungry process, and houses will need the extra capacity to cope with it.
“On top of which, I have three small children, aged seven to 10, so they can all be in the same room at the same time, using iPads, laptops and other technology that needs a lot of data.”
This requires not just a lot of sockets on the wall, but a sophisticated wiring system behind it (CAT 5 is the latest name for it, soon to be superseded by CAT 6).
In addition, recent improvements in home insulation have created a need for yet more little hi-tech boxes, this time to improve mobile phone reception.
But at this point, it is worth mentioning that all these gadgets can go wrong. While we might like the sound of living in a smart house, it is altogether less appealing when the house turns out to be smarter than we are, or at least too complicated for us to put right.
For his part, James Wyatt maintains that all the average grown-up needs is a child under the age of 12 to explain how the gizmos function. Others, however, acknowledge the terror that can afflict the technophobic.
“Whoever buys my house will be given a full day’s induction course in how the various systems work,” promises Malcolm Atkins, whose two-bedroom Knightsbrige home is on the market for £6.65 million with Wetherell (020 7529 5566; www.wetherell.co.uk).
Described in the particulars as “a hedonistic and exotic jewel”, the house boasts not only a garage big enough for Malcolm’s Bentley, but a home cinema, a gigantic spa pool, lighting that can be operated by iPhone and throughout-the-house chilled ceilings (the hot-weather alternative to underfloor heating).
“On top of which, all the technology will be covered by ongoing maintenance and repair contracts,” says Malcolm, and you can’t say fairer than that.
After all, it’s reassuring to know there’s a little man who will pop around and put the offending appliance right, especially if it’s something as expensive as a full-scale home management system.
Yet here lies the question at the heart of the matter: Is all this technology a welcome and liberating phenomenon, or the beginning of a world in which we are being taken over by machines?
“In many ways, these systems do exactly the same jobs as used to be performed by domestic staff,” says Malcolm Atkins. “Mind you, just as with real-life maids and butlers, it’s important to establish at the outset who’s the servant and who’s the master.”
Ah well, at least some things don’t change.
