Home of the future shaped by the coronavirus pandemic

After the 1918 influenza pandemic changed people’s attitudes towards hygiene and health, subway tiles, dressing rooms and wardrobes-all the basic design elements found in many homes today-these design influences still exist for more than a century . Understanding the historical significance of the coronavirus pandemic requires decades of research, but its impact has already been reflected in home design.

Nancy Keenan, President and CEO of Dahlin Group Architecture Planning, Pleasanton, California, said: “We know that for some time, people’s interest in healthy living has been a trend, and this trend is driven by the covid-19 pandemic. accelerate."
"I started to study previous epidemics to see if there are still design trends after the pandemic ended, and found that the dressing room was invented during the [1918 influenza pandemic] with the purpose of interacting with everyone in the house Provide a cleanup place before."
Other design changes from the 1918 flu era included the use of subway tiles in the bathroom for easy cleaning and built-in closets to separate clothes from people and eliminate vacuuming closets. Keenan said that the carpets and curtains in the bathroom were removed to reduce bacteria.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, the initial focus was on how to keep people away and how shops, restaurants, schools and workplaces will adapt.
“90% of people across the country are sheltering in place, but at first no one talked about the impact on our relationship with families and communities,” said marketing expert Teri Slavik-Tsuyuki, who is the head of TST Ink in San Diego. "I want to know how living and working at home will change people's perception of home, and how this will affect future home design."
Keenan and Slavik-Tsuyuki worked with Belinda Sward, the founder and chief strategist of the Strategic Solutions Alliance in Carlsbad, California, to conduct in-depth research and surveys of more than 6,000 consumers. A home design called "America at Home" to collect insights into the future. The research team recently collaborated with Garman Homes, a residential builder in Raleigh, North Carolina, to design and build a "concept home" in the Chatham Park community in Pittsboro, North Carolina, which reflects their interest in Americans. I want to study how to live today.
Alaina Money-Garman, co-founder and CEO of Garman Homes, said: “During the pandemic, we want to understand how people live at home and how we design for their lifestyles.” “We also want to know how homes are. How does it perform. The pandemic is a stress test on consumers’ houses."
Now completed, the 2,600 square foot model home has four bedrooms and four bathrooms. This house will be a model house and learning tool for about a year. The final selling price may vary depending on market conditions and is estimated to be between 650,000 and 700,000 US dollars.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said: "For us, the concept house is not very big, which is very important because its purpose is to make the house adapt to the median house price of any construction site."
“No matter how big the house is, space needs to work hard and respond to the people who live there. For builders, consider what is important to consumers and what they need, not how big a house they can build on a particular plot. This is a different way of thinking. Not every house needs a huge home office and a huge outdoor space."
When every family member is at home for a long time at the same time, a family needs to work hard to meet all needs.
"You need to make sure that every inch of space has its full potential and that nothing unnecessary is added," Money-Garman said. "A home should be like a James Bond car, equipped with all the tools to help the people at home so they can cope with anything."
A new floor plan innovation is the "family bathroom" on the second floor. Usually, a four-bedroom house will have an interconnecting bathroom shared by the children.
Money-Garman said: "When parents or caregivers need to bathe their children, these bathrooms are usually narrow and awkward." "Parents will eventually use their larger bathrooms for the children, which means that when adults want to use them The bathroom was filled with toys and children’s shampoo while performing self-care."
The family bathroom in the concept house has more space than most hall bathrooms, with lower counters, separate large bathtubs and showers, and sinks.
For example, the first-floor guest room of the concept room is designed to be used as an isolation room when necessary, with its own entrance to the front porch for fresh air and outdoor activities; a pocket door connecting it to the rest of the house; and an adjacent private bathroom.
"We want to make the kitchen do more, so the cabinets we designed are like Swiss Army Knives in terms of functionality," Keenan said.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said: "We re-orientated the kitchen sink so that we can see the family living space, and added a child-height shelf on the L-shaped island, making it easier for children to be independent and self-help."
Money-Garman says the kitchen is "high-performance" because it is highly organized, with open shelves at the end of the island, easy-to-clean quartz counters and quartz backsplashes.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said that the interviewees in this study expressed the hope that their home feels like a safe and secure place. The emphasis on safety has promoted several design elements of the concept house, such as making it easier to keep homes safe and residents clean.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said: “People use their homes as a safe space to socialize with friends and family, especially outdoors.” “The house has an oversized front porch and a large covered space at the back to breathe fresh air.”
Keenan said that a key floor plan feature is the way residents and guests get to their homes, which is more meaningful than many previously designed houses.
"The front door has an anteroom, and the anteroom has a glass door that can lock the rest of the house, so it feels like people are arriving in stages," Keenan said. "The front hall can be used to place packages and protect someone from the weather without having to bring them all the way into the house. It also feels safer."
Today’s houses usually have an open corridor inside the front door, which Slavik-Tsuyuki says is a waste of space.
"You can shrink this space and use it more thoughtfully," she said. "Each space needs to work harder and respond to the changing needs of homeowners."
Many single-family homes have a special "family entrance" from the garage or driveway with backpack hooks. The concept house takes this entrance to a new level, with more storage space, a powder room and the option of placing a laundry room in that space.
"The home entrance can be entered from the garage or courtyard, and is designed to allow people to disinfect before entering the rest of the house," Money-Garman said.
For decades, many people seem to want the laundry room upstairs because this is the place where most of the clothes are produced, but researchers at "America at Home" have found that for convenience, most people now want the laundry room on the first floor because They stayed downstairs longer.
The outdoor living space of the concept house is also designed to make residents feel safe and healthy.
“Outdoor spaces are sometimes designed after the fact, so we are very interested in designing covered outdoor spaces next to guest rooms and family rooms so that people can work and socialize outside while feeling protected,” Keenan said.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said that the concept house has multiple flexible spaces and two home offices, none of which are bedrooms.
"The important thing is not to treat the secondary bedroom as the default setting for everything," she said. "If the bedroom is used for all purposes, it won't make people relax."
The floor plan includes a large flexible space for a home office near the front door and guest room.
"That room can be a traditional home office, it can also be used as a game room, a classroom, or even a living space for an extended guest room," Keenan said. "If buyers want to use the door for customers or guests, they can add a door to the front hall."
Money-Garman said that this flexible room on the first floor has a Dutch door that separates the space from the foyer to provide children with "arrival tips" when the room is used for school. If needed, the space is enough to accommodate two private offices.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said: "The other office on the first floor is a corner of the kitchen. There is a window with natural light above the built-in desk and shelf." "We added a sound attenuation function to the room, and a window for Zoom calls. Door, but you are outside the kitchen, so you can be part of the family when you need it."
Another pocket office is located on the second floor. If buyers prefer the location upstairs, they can choose the laundry room.
Slavik-Tsuyuki said that as part of the research, homeowners were asked how their daily lives and rituals changed during the pandemic.
"People realize that they need a place where they can be unplugged and be alone," she said. "They need a separate space to decompress at home, a place they can use for a date night at home, a meditation space or a'cry room' to vent their emotions on their own."
"One person told us that he called from the car because he had no place at home to make work calls quietly," Slavik-Tsuyuki said. "The concept house has both a kitchen corner and a secret room with a private phone."
Money-Garman said that in the concept house, the secret room is a place to read or play music alone.
"We hope this extra room is whimsical and a bit of a cheeky surprise, so that's why it has a hidden entrance outside the bedroom," she said.
Although local builders and consumers in North Carolina can visit the concept house in person and share their thoughts on the design, they can also visit the house online.
In the weeks after the pandemic began, real estate agents and home builders began to rely on virtual tours, video chats, and online resources to continue to find and buy homes. Although a home study in the United States found that most people still prefer face-to-face travel, many people are more willing to buy everything online—including houses—than in the past.
"We know that many people, especially millennials, are more likely to research every purchase online before they buy anything," said John Cecilian Jr., CEO and founding partner of Cecilian Partners in Philadelphia, who was responsible for this. A concept design of the website and virtual navigator.
“Millennials spend time learning something online before going to see something, so we create an immersive concept home experience based on how they interact with their home rather than a single room.”
Cecilian said that the concept home website has some sections labeled as reaching, charging, eating, working, and breathing. These sections have a 3D image that can digitally explore this aspect of the family.
"We are using mobile devices, tablets and desktops to tell the story of this house and what it's like to live there," Cecilian said.
"We think every builder will eventually do something like this to help buyers understand the flexible space of the house before seeing the house. Visiting the model house at first can be overwhelming, all the choices buyers can make The complexity may be too much. This digital experience provides them with an easy way to enter the process."