By Alexis Grace
Adam Architecture link to be inserted –
2019 has been a year where architecture and design has looked at the future of buildings and private spaces and seen that people think differently than they have traditionally. That is why there is a focus on more multi-purpose spaces within residential structures, ensuring that the modern person gets exactly what they want out of a home, and that doesn’t necessarily always add up to the traditional homes that we have become accustomed to over the last century. Architects must now look at residential projects as a space for modular living, with spaces and rooms that serve more than one purpose.
What this means practically, is that you will have multiple rooms in a home that have several purposes, rather than a living room just being used as a living room, for example, or a dining room being left alone and only used during dinner time or when entertaining guests once in a blue moon. There will always be calls for new build homes to have these traditional angles, such as dining rooms and study spaces, but it has already started to change as a concept, and we are now seeing more home designs that include an evolution of the way we use different rooms within our homes.
Interior and exterior spaces transition seamlessly from one to another in certain types of rooms, especially where sliding doors and dividers are utilised effectively within extensions and rooms that would have previously been used as a dining area, or only used during the summer months. With clever design and modern architecture, spaces can be utilised all year-round, and for many different people living in a space, whether you are living with a partner, your family, or a group of friends. The idea is to open up our homes to flexibility and different potential outcomes from one day to the next – whatever is needed or desired for that particular day.
There are two ways in which we can see this most evidently, and that is with the success of home offices and indoor-outdoor spaces. The modern workforce is used to working remotely on a regular basis, so it is important to have a dedicated space at home that can be used for work in a peaceful and productive way, but with modular living this space does not have to be solely defined as a home office space. Instead, it can be a room that functions as a home office when required, but can then be used in a completely different way on other days.
Indoor-outdoor spaces have become more fashionable in recent times, especially as more people attempt to reconnect with nature, and you can see that in many residential architecture plans in the last year to 18-months. It is desirable now to have that transition space between inside your home and outside, whether this is through a balcony space, a back-garden area, or attempting to bring greater levels of natural light inside through the installation of skylights and the like.
