What will apartments be like 50 years from now? Emma Cullinantakes inspiration from current trends and past experience
TO GET an idea of how apartment dwellers might live in 50 years' time it might, surprisingly, help to look back 50 years to an innovative scheme designed by Le Corbusier in France. His Unite d'Habitation unit, in Marseilles (there were more in other cities later) incorporated a floor of shops, a hotel, apartments and even a roof playground with a swimming, and a park around the building. There were more than 20 different apartment configurations to accommodate single people up to families of 10, nearly all with double-height living rooms and deep balconies.
And 80 years ago Berthold Lubetkin (in the firm Tecton) design the High Point flats in London which were on a cruciform plan, allowing for plenty of external walls ergo a lot of natural light.
Both were seen as forward thinking yet much of what has been designed since has ignored such innovation, having been done on the cheap to create dull, thin-walled, box-like homes.
Yet, while those two buildings caused future shock, there has been a quieter, slower revolution happening in building design. Once people see what can be possible they begin to, rightly, become more choosy about where they live and demand the sorts of things that make their lives better.
Through seeing good examples, we know that apartments can provide a sense of community, decent open spaces and plenty of natural light - and that is what we want.
In recent years Irish people have realised just how important natural light is and they are also more aware of orientation: ie, that a south-facing apartment will get all-day sun, a west-facing one will get evening sun and a east-facing window will bring in morning light. And if an apartment has windows at both ends - ie, is dual aspect - then the chances of eliciting sun rays are heightened.
As a result, it is unlikely that there will be any apartments in 50 years' time that suffer from a north-facing, single aspect. Or, if they are built, no one will buy them. And palming such apartments off on someone on the social housing list should be against the European Convention of Human Rights by then.
In 50 years' time developers will actually be required to provide social housing in all schemes, the government having realised that mixing communities often reduces social problems.
On the other hand, apartment dwellers should be equipped, by then, with more power to require disruptive people to leave the complex.
Electronic gates will also be a thing of the past, as designers and town planners understand how to knit communities together and not alienate people.
In order to encourage people to live in towers and yet feel close to the outside world, every apartment will have a balcony, at least, if not a winter garden (a balcony enclosed with openable glass).
Also, to feel more at one with nature, perfectly smooth and 'luxury' finishes will be replaced by more natural materials, such as timber, stone, and slate: if you are cut off from the earth you need a sense of it in your apartment.
Following on from this, there will be more sustainable elements such as wind turbines and solar panels on the roof, and rain and grey water collectors will gather water to flush toilets with.
There will also be a bicycle shed for the use of all.
The apartment interiors will have sliding doors to create flexible living spaces, and non-structural internal walls so that layouts can be changed as the family size differs over the years - or as people's mobility perhaps reduces (or increases: roll-on medical research).
Communal staircases will be innovatively designed - perhaps spiralling up a glass tube - and placed prominently in the entrance hall to encourage people to use them.
Community centres may be seen as rather artificial ways of gathering people together and, instead, there will be places that you can drop into, such as shops in or near the building, a library and a coffee shop in the reception area - adorned with armchairs and couches - which will be staffed by people who double up as caretakers and receptionists, or those who live in the apartments, to create a sense of staff permanence and community spirit. There will also be a parent/baby meeting place.
Apartments will be designed around green spaces that are enclosed by the homes - to stop passers-by wandering in - and overlooked.
Yet they will be carefully designed with enough vegetation and play things to stop people feeling exposed when they sit in them, while allowing people to check on their (older) children from their apartments.
Planting will include fruit trees to provide snacks.
Tennis courts and bowling greens could also be incorporated - following the model of squares throughout Ireland, such as Belgrave, Kenilworth and Brighton Squares in Dublin 6.
These are seen as charming and desirable and yet there is no reason why they can't be used in plenty of other housing schemes.
There will also be roof gardens, both for people in the apartments to use and to provide a more beautiful roofscape for apartment dwellers in taller buildings around it to look at.
This probably sounds like a bid for utopia but much of this is happening now and there is no reason why everybody can't live in this way in 50 years' time.
