Abstract
The size of a house today in the USA is 1,000 square feet (92m²) larger than what it was in 1971, with all that extra space going partly to free children from having to share a bedroom, to accommodate Americans’ ever growing bulk of material possessions, and to make room for more lavish entertaining. With this size increase there was bound to be a price to pay: The bigger the house the more money, time, energy, and effort one needs to maintain and clean it. A bigger house will be more expensive, producing more debt and risk, its environmental impact is larger because it requires more resources, and once you are ready to sell, a bigger house will have less of a market of people financially able to afford buying it. So, as we start to deal with the results of global warming, we need to ask ourselves, what is the right size for a home? In this paper, I present a series of new housing models that look into socio-economic trends of new modalities of living, influenced by new technologies, a sustainable consciousness, and the need for community development, which altogether produce a housing typology (live/work/farm) re-designed to adapt to the needs of the future.
Presenters
Camilo CerroAssociate Professor of Architecture and Interior Design, College of Architecture, Art, and Design, American University of Sharjah, Ash Shariqah [Sharjah], United Arab Emirates
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Right-sizing, Live-work-farm, Sustainable Consciousness, Community Development, New Technologies
