Can MIT's RoboWall Make a Small House or Apartment Seem Bigger?
Not everyone aspires (or can afford) to live in a McMansion. There are a growing number of people who subscribe to the tiny or small house movement and choose to live in dwellings less than a thousand square feet—some even less than two hundred square feet.
However, whether it’s a commendable choice to reduce your carbon footprint or a financial necessity, small living spaces are, you know, really small. And no matter how often you turn to Pinterest or Houzz for inspiration, a life day after day in a studio apartment can turn out to be rather claustrophobic. Turns out someone’s working on technology to help with that.
MIT Media Lab’s Changing Places research group investigates new models for architecture design, mobility systems, and networked intelligence with the goal of making dynamic places to suit today’s lifestyles. MIT’s Principal Research Scientist Kent Larson and his team at the Changing Places group started asking some “What if?” questions:
What if a gesture can transform a large bedroom into a fully equipped office or a dining room for six friends or a comfortable living room? What if you could double the size of your bathroom or extend your counter space. What if you could load apps for your home to adjust lighting to control privacy, to personalize your space, and if you want, your home could listen and respond?
The result is a prototype called “The CityHome,” an ultra-efficient, responsive small home/apartment with a footprint (840 square feet) and hardware and software that lets you customize your living space to function like an area two or three times larger.
According to MIT Media Lab, the key is the RoboWall: “an integrated and modular wall system that responds to gestures, touch and voice commands to move and transform typical components of a home—living room, bedroom and dining room furniture, storage, lighting, office equipment and furniture, and entertainment systems.”
As reported in Fast Company, Larson maintains that CityHome “isn’t just a concept, but a viable product, and he intends to bring it to market through either a startup or a commercial sponsor.”
What do you think? We can’t help but imagine what fun a toddler could have with the gestures.
