- Life driven by innovative design -
A round table organized by Facci & Pollini and hosted by Haier in IFA Berlin 2011
This is the abstract of Aldo Cibic‘s contribution

We are living an historical period of big changes.
Because of a new consciousness regarding the limit of human life on this planet it’s very stimulating to redefine life-styles and aesthetics. The concept of beauty is more and more related to the idea of a rituality. Eating, working, relaxing, dressing are no more actions that we carelessly do. We spend our time and our money to optimize our consumption in order to reach the best. The idea is to build an efficient system of life that uses fewer resources in a more conscious way; from this point of view I would like that technology could be an effective tool in articulating this changing process.

If we think of how the change is happening in everyday life, a concept of sustainability can be related to the idea of optimizing spaces and functions. Because of the fact that many people are more and more working at home, domestic space is undergoing a process of hybridization.

The first example is the single-family house, the second is the emerging model of co-housing.
In the first case the living area is becoming a place where you spend most of your time working from home, relaxing, cooking, eating, meeting people for work and friends; this means that all the technology is there (the TV is a monitor for work and leisure purpose), the dinner table is, during the day, at the same time a table for working, cooking and eating; everything has to happen with a high sense of aesthetic. The bedroom can become a place where a part of its main purpose is sleeping, but in the same time it can be a more private living room where you can relax, watching movies, etc…

The second example is the model of co-housing; basically it means a building where the domestic space is minimal and there are common areas like living spaces similar to the hotel lobbies: common kitchen and washing areas, common vegetable gardens…In this way we are going to have a small scale technology in the single apartment and a friendly bigger scale technology for the public space. Personally I am very fascinated by this typology, because is involving a sense of community.

These examples can be conceived as visions to inspire ideas on how technology can follow and satisfy the change to reach a more contemporary way of living.