”The Future of Homes” from Futurist Sylvia Gallusser

Sylvia Galusser, Founder and CEO Silicon Humanism, graduated in Social Sciences (B.A. Sorbonne University) and Business Arts (HEC Paris), and had been a strategy consultant for the past 15 years, advising more than 500 companies on their strategy for the U.S. market and fundraising, from educational tools and employee engagement platforms, to medical devices and aging-in-place technology.

Her research organization, Silicon Humanism, focuses on examining our social nature and human future and how technology is serving or stopping our species. SH has built a framework called X-ING FROM HOME to provide an overview for the future of home life. This framework shows two components: during the pandemic, many activities were transferred inside the home and the introduction of three alternative futures for the 5-10 years to come.

There are predicted three post-pandemic scenarios in the long term: back to consumerism, online shopping increase, and sustainable consumption. These are related to the different activities that started to happen in the home environment - namely work, education, entertainment, socialization, and consumption. “It’s not as much about one scenario dominating the others as putting all of them on the table and envisioning which consequences each of these scenarios would bring.” Sylvia Galusser, Founder and CEO Silicon Humanism.

For example, France has resistance to change and a strong push towards a return to the familiar. Shopkeepers protested government orders to keep stores closed for sanitary reasons, restaurateurs strapped on aprons in defiance of Covid-19 closures, booksellers preferred to pay fines to stay open, customers rushed to café terraces as soon as the lockdown was over.  This points towards meeting and consuming back in person.

“In favor of the second scenario, you have the adaptation of small business to survive the pandemic. Even small stores invested in an e-commerce website and connected with a delivery platform to pursue business. And they plan to continue”, said Sylvia Galusser.

On the consumer side, 128M Americans used a voice assistant in 2020 to make their purchases. In the beauty industry, digital try-ons and smart mirrors with a makeup coach or a fitness coach guiding the client have entered the everyday life of many people. And food delivery apps have more than doubled their revenue.

Regarding the third scenario, 67% of consumers have been limiting food waste and making more sustainable or ethical purchases, with 90% likely to continue. There’s a revival for local bakeries, food trucks, farmer markets, as well as a democratization of permaculture and a steady grow-your-own-food trend.

The tendency may favor the scenario based on transformation, but indicators show that sustainable consumption is not an easy option for everyone. “Some populations will deal with first-necessity purchasing closer to a survival mode than sustainable conscientious buying behaviors,” confessed Sylvia. 

“We chose to map the future of the home along two dimensions - threat and reaction,” says Silvia. Threat dimension can be from outside - pandemic, social chaos, economic crisis, ecological catastrophe, civil war, nuclear war - or from inside - domestic violence, physical or verbal abuse, toxic work-from-home environment, loneliness, and helplessness. The reaction dimension is fragility versus resilience. 

Silicon Humanism has built a quadrant producing 4 archetypes of future homes: The Toxic Home (Threat from inside x Fragile), The Bunker Home (Exterior threat x Fragile), The Tetris Home (Threat from inside x Resilient), and The Safe Haven (Exterior threat x Resilient).

“We have underlined three futures of work in our “X-ing from home” declared Silvia, mentioning Back to the familiar scheme, Pandemic-frozen, and the creative disruption scenario. “Half of UK workers miss in-person chats with co-workers, and 10% miss office perks. In that scenario, most workers return to the office, except for a few telecommuting days. Employers invest in safe and healthy workplaces.” shared Silvia as part of Back to the familiar scheme.

In the Pandemic-frozen scenario, remote work is here to stay. Offices are rarely visited, and the home workplace has improved with new features and employer perks. The creative disruption scenario is based on a hybrid workplace, transformed but resilient. New workplace: mixing work-from-home, social work hubs, redesigned office life in less populated areas, and work-from-anywhere.  At home, we have new specialized rooms at the intersection of work and leisure.

Interesting to observe are the new forms of organizing work and work-life such as the hub-and-spoke office model, where companies rely on central “hub” headquarters for important meetings and events and a network of smaller regional offices.

As we deal with the “remote work/return to the office/hybrid model” debate, which inundates our media platforms, we must not dismiss the situation of millions of frontline workers.  ”There is a sense of resentment among some essential workers for whom there is no return since they continued working on-site throughout the pandemic. Otherwise, we risk opening a breach between anxiety from white-collars returning to the office and exhaustion from frontline workers.”, concluded Sylvia Galusser.

The 2020 pandemic has challenged the Home Design world and related industries (real estate, home developers, interior design, furniture manufacturers, home appliances, etc.) which has revealed itself to be mostly unprepared. The pandemic has shown limitations in the way homes were designed in recent years (for example: a taste for open plans and low energy equipment) and has hindered the physical and experiential processes of building homes.

However, the pandemic has also acted as a disruptor and driver for home designers to rethink trends, functions, and features, as well as design work processes. It replaces health, comfort, and resilience at the core of the home experience.

Finally, the pandemic underlines the “resilience vs. sustainability” dilemma, as more resilience sometimes means less sustainability (for example multiplying energy sources). Architects are now creative at solving the paradox, finding new ways of integrating both resilience and sustainability to create our Future Home.

Sylvia is a speaker in our Future Summit, taking place November 15-21 online.