DESIGN IN GENERAL:

I envisage the future to be a dark place both on the Sunshine coast and the world in general, not dark in terms of some kind of gloomy spiritual presence or metaphorical cloud hovering over us but black in the sense of literal darkness it is going to be too expensive to pay for the frivolous things such as streetlights running 24 /7 when the price of electricity ramps up (even more than it currently is. The darkening in terms of housing and architecture will result in the response of home owners will not want to be paying excessive bills to have ridiculous halogen spotlights focused on feature trees in their garden or fences to impress the neighbors and passers-by. I predict a lot of systems will evolve from 240 V to 12 V systems in a similar manner to what we see now on boats and caravans in response to using electricity more efficiently and solar battery banking arrays such as the Tesla house battery wall will become more common to store energy produced at off peak times.

 

AT AND URBAN DESIGN SCALE:

I predicted cities will not be able to afford to keep their egocentric skyscrapers and bridges lit at all hours of the night for no fucking reason and for that reason cities will be slightly darker domains. I’m forecasting that people will be much more acutely aware of the consequences of leaving lights on all the time at a residential scale for this same reason. I am also predicting there will be far more smart technology adopted in typical households, sensors able to predict how long the pantry light should stay on for or another example a walk in robe light which is capable of turing itself off when no human presence has been sensed for a period of time. I imagine future communities will become more autonomous / localised and less reliant on everything being manufactured in China and shipped half way across the world when fuel prices rise and transport costs go through the roof people will be buying things from local farmers rather than having asparagus flown in overnight from Peru, people will buy things which are more seasonal rather than having Granny Smith apple available every day for 365 days a year and at a larger scale house hold items and materials too.

RESIDENTIAL DESIGN SCALE:

I’m prophesying that houses will become a lot smaller in scale, due to the rapid rise of costs of building materials, transportation and heating associated with massive houses and for the same reason the cost of aircon and heating to a lesser extent we might see the reduction of garages as well, which could foresseably shrink accordingly as people reduce the size and number of cars they own. As the cost of living increases with time there will be potentially more importance placed upon items such as insulation both in terms of building materials and also glazing. As a direct result of heating costs increasing houses will need to become more efficient.

ARCHITECTURAL AESTHETICS:

Perhaps architectural aesthetics will also evolve accordingly and revert back to a more austere time prior to the industrial revolution where windows were much smaller in reaction to the inability to produce large expanses of glass. I can envision a future of much smaller blocks of land the popularization of small lot housing is both in response to the lack of future decent sized urban parcels of land and also savvy property developers who are trying to squeeze more houses into existing blocks in the name of altruism and higher density living. I’m personally a fan of small lot housing I believe a great deal can be achieved in a small space with the right motivations and creative minds involved also I believe that the current paradigms of the Standard 600 m² block of land has had its day my other prediction is that there will be no such thing as localised vernacular style architecture in the future as with the increase and instant connectivity of the Internet there is a monoculture brewing the term international style is an understatement when you look at the Pintrest pages of people living in Bali, Brazil or Brisbane the houses are often identical carbon copies these days seemingly cut and pasted from the same online resources resulting in a virtual verbatim.

 

“I envisage the future of design to be darker both on the Sunshine coast and globally, not dark in terms of some kind of gloomy spiritual presence or metaphorical cloud hovering over us but black in the sense of literal darkness- at this rate it is going to be too expensive to pay for current lighting trends”.