From Deep Seas to Outer Space: 30 Futuristic Home Designs. Continue reading below Our Featured Videos Concept designs are more than mere fantasy or idle musing – they drive real technological change, keeping us here-and-now humans looking ahead toward a never-certain future. Hover and click below for more details on each design. [ImageGallery] Newsletter Sign Up Get the latest design news! Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest design news. Thanks for subscribing! Many concepts are already in the works: cars that plug into rather than park next to homes, mobile pods for off-the-grid living and three-dimensionally-complex objects that only a few years ago were hard to model on a computer, let alone construct in real life. From aquatic towns to orbital hotels, the above articles cover unbuilt wonders that test the limits of curry technology but also provide something for the future to look back on as a benchmark.
Futuristic Rooftop Living Room in a Compact Prefab Capsule. Self-contained, portable and prefabricated, this Living Roof idea encapsulates an ideal of mobile and modular urban expansion the only way most cities can still go: up. Each unit can rotate into various functional configurations and can also exist off the grid; they rely on a highly-insulated exterior shells, a series of solar panels and mini-turbines on either end (that both generate power and pump rainwater to waiting collectors).
Falling somewhere between a UFO and a giant alien football, there is no doubt these portable rooftop pods make a strong visual statement- their additive nature is otherworldly but strangely beautiful. “Used as an alternative to hotel rooms or as a temporary residence for multi-city dwellers, the Living Roof project exists as individual suites spread throughout the city. Inside, rather than dispersing activities horizontally, a functional ring vertically combines sleep, lounge and work areas.”
Modular Makeover: Futuristic Open-Plan Trailer Home Ideas. Trailer parks do not enjoy the best reputation, which may be why so many designers tackle the tough-but-worthy challenge of reinventing this prototypical modular home. Few, however, project their plans all the way to remote deserts (or in this case: even the moon). This project by Cannata & Fernandes is perhaps best thought of as a work in progress, or even more basic: an ongoing series of creative experiments.
While their 3D models, drawings and composite renderings put these prefabs in extreme environments, there is no actual plan in place (yet) to export these beyond our atmosphere. The already-built example does, however, reach for the sky – it nests high up on a hill. Power, unsurprisingly, is solar – after all, what else can you count on to fuel your home in space without winds (let alone a power grid).
Floating City?! Futurist Ocean Frontiers & High-Seas Homes. In a world where almost every square inch of (non-freezing) land seems occupied, it is no wonder that our imaginations take us to the high seas when we think of adventure, freedom and new frontiers. The floating ‘Lilypad‘ concept above envisions a series of entire mobile, self-sufficient and off-the-grid ocean cities, but you do not have to look into the far future to see amazing artificial architecture for living on the water.
From former military stations to over-sized oil platforms, there are already many fully-oceanic structures sitting far from land and anchored into the Earth far below the waves. One of the classic examples is these sea fort towers off the coast of Britain that were deserted after being used to fend off air raids in world war too – and which have since been stripped of bridges but still used in a variety of creative ways both residential and commercial in nature. So what is the future of floating urban life?
It is hard to say. NURBan Design: Extreme Curved-in-3D Home Construction. With the shape of a spaceship, scaled skin of some giant serpent and amazing futuristic forms that defy easy description, this home seems like some kind of science-fiction vision or creative artist rendering … but represents a reality architects have dreamed of for decades – a whole house of NURBS. “Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) is a mathematical model commonly used in computer graphics for generating and representing curves and surfaces which offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analytic and freeform shapes.” In short: they are a way to create incredible irregular shapes that are often nearly impossible to construct in the real world … until now.
Increasingly complex computer programs and precise laser-cutting techniques have turned even the most irregular, unusual and unique shapes into potentially buildable structures like this amazing new home designed by architect Enric Ruiz-Geli. New Urbanism Pontooned or Luxury Houseboat Community? Houseboats are generally thought of like cars or houses – unique and individuated structures, new or old, for rent or sale, but generally quite varied within a given harbor or group of houseboats.
In short: they are treated as stand-alone properties, not as pieces of an bigger plan. Here, however, we have something strange – a design caught beween New Urbanist town planning, temporary autonomous zones and exclusive suburban enclosures, with a twist. This alternative idea blends elements of planned communities and residential towers, with each houseboat acting as both an independent pontoon-riding mobile home as well as a part of a larger floating community of lake-bound homes.
Erikstad Architecture has a vision of this community that clearly integrates larger urban design strategies as well as architectural tactics. Prefabricated Futures: 7 Stunning Small-Space Design Ideas. The challenge of Prefab 2020? Create a sensation – something more than just a working space to live. Ideas that will inspire others, to be planted within the dizzyingly dense cores of the major city centers. Use design to show the incredible potential of prefabricated, modular and small-space apartments, condos and other housing types.
The result? A series of fun, functional and futuristic dwelling designs from stackable bubble homes to fold-out, house-in-the-box architecture. Think about it for a moment: how much of your interior living space is actually in continuous use, or even used most of the time? What use is the space over the streets we already occupy on either side? Worried about the visual noise that will accompany overcrowding? If we run out of land (or the tides keep rising), there is always the other 70% of the world. Suburban Recall: 10 Futuristic Green Suburb Redesigns. Unlike a poorly designed product, there is no way to issue a simple recall on the failures associated with the incredible suburban sprawl of recent decades. The dust has, however, settled on on the sustainable design proposals submitted to the Reburbia competition, the winners have been announced, and a series of awe-inspiring ideas for reclaiming and remaking American suburbs have emerged – from finalists and runners-up alike.
Some projects focused on larger-scale suburban issues while others honed in on specific problems and areas of interest. The more bizarre and offbeat ideas include the incredible suburban airships of Tsolakis+Shamma as well as the fantastic (if insanely far-fetched) interstate highways-turned-farms conceived by designer Daniel Phillips . Additional entries suggested highway-overpass wind-power turbines, street median-to-green-space conversions, giant modular housing towers and more. New Green Prefab Idea: 500K Billboards as Modular Housing. There are nearly 500,000 freestanding billboards in the United States alone. What if any number of these could be converted en mass into functional, modular prefab homes that could be shipped and installed in rural and urban areas around the country – eco-friendly, cheap new housing from recycled old billboards.
Prefabrication and portability are nothing new in architecture and transportation, but world-changing modular and mass-producible visions like this concept by Nocturnal Design Labs are few and far between. Unlike most conventional prefabs, these spaces are planned with interior layouts, sun paths and wind patterns in mind, giving the result a distictive and dynamic shape. Newsletter Sign Up Get the latest design news! Sign up for our newsletter and get the latest design news. Thanks for subscribing! “nocturnal design Lab [n:dL] was founded in 2004 by Brendan O’Grady, AIA and Tom Trenolone, AIA in Dallas, TX.
Stylish, Sustainable & Self-Sufficient Solar Home on the Sea. Powered by solar energy from the sun above, supplied with drinking, washing and bathing water by the surrounding waves and naturally ventilated via the ocean winds, this ultramodern minimalist house is designed to be entirely off-the-grid – an energy-independent home in one of the most unlikely places: floating well off the coast and riding on the water’s surface. Many seasteading projects focus on sustainability-in-numbers, a critically massive enclave that can support a large group floating out to sea – or even a small ocean-going city. This project is perhaps more modest in scale but most impressive for its realistic (if still somewhat futuristic) treatment of the structural and power-related dilemmas posed by living life off land.
Much like skyscrapers are made to bend in the wind and sway with earthquakes, these offshore houses are designed with structural anchors but are also allowed to move up and down and from side to side with passing winds and waves. Driverless Self-Parking (Post)Modern Mobile Home Design. From pocket gadgets to portable houses, modularity and mobility are the hottest buzzwords of the industrial design world, so any sleek new conceptual (post)modern mobile home design that combines these is bound to raise heads – and, in this case, with very good reason. Imagine a driverless car that is customized inside but conventionalized outside, providing comfortable portable interior spaces within a no-hassle self-driving-and-parking structural shell that slots itself into place after dropping you off. To date, many (if not most) autonomous self-driving vehicle designs have looked a lot like typical modern-day cars – a forward-focused look-where-you-are-going design that emphasizes the role of driver and movement in the design.
Mike and Maaike turn many of our assumptions about the nature of private transportation around and flip car-centric assumptions upside-down. Will driverless car technology ever completely eliminate humans as drivers? High-Tech, Kevlar-Clad House Transforms to Avoid Disasters. A prototype, to be sure, but what a beautiful design and brilliant idea. A combination of formal choices and built-in technologies recognize the awesome power of nature, and attempt to adapt to rather than defy environmental conditions on the ground (or in the sky).
Under heavy winds, hydraulic systems kick in that shift the normally-lofted home down to safety below. As the residence drops underground, a waterproof roof layer slides into place to protect it. At each step, a series of sensors tell the home what conditions it needs to adapt to, and when it is safe to come back out. Photocatatlyic coatings and carbon nanotubes are built into the exterior skin to absorb toxins, pollutants and carbon dioxide while also powering the house itself. A kind of futuristic home-meets-bomb-shelter idea for all conditions and environments. Casper - Herz aus Holz.