Adapt and unwind: wellness rooms of the future

With our lives so hectic and with no signs of this letting up, people are looking for ways to slow down. Words such as mindfulness and well-being are commonplace and less hectic exercises such as Yoga are growing in popularity.

I was listening to Radio Nova recently and for a week they pretended to broadcast from 1982, the year the Dublin pirate forebear of the same name began broadcasting. The DJs did not allow themselves email or mobile phones.

No Twitter or Facebook, no new technology whatsoever. Turntables and landlines only. And they said the week seemed to drag on because communication was so much slower.

With this supercharged pace of life we are searching for ways to slow down but that needs to be convenient. Making time to go to a class or the gym can feel like another chore, so making space to unwind at home is a possible solution.

We created a showhouse for the Ideal Home Show this year and wanted to explore some forward-thinking ideas. We looked at trends in lifestyle and translated those into a series of living spaces to create what we called the home of the “near” future. One of these living spaces was what we called “the wellness room”. When we were coming up with the concept of this room it was interesting that everyone in our office had a different idea of what the room should be like.

For some it was a completely dark space where you could retreat and rest. For others it was a place to exercise. And for others it was a place to escape technology and read. This type of room is not one you will see on any estate agent’s sales brochure, so we kept the finishes quite conceptual.

We recreated the gorgeous relaxation seats from the luxury spa hotel Monart in Co Wexford, and installed a projector instead of a TV to allow flexibility in how the room was used.

Time to relax is incredibly important and to have a space in your home where you can do this is a real luxury.

Perfect environment

Even though technology makes many of us want to hide away it can enable us to create the perfect environment to unwind. Technology is becoming smarter and smarter with household objects becoming wifi-enabled.

Last year, Google bought Nest Labs, a "home automation" company, for $3.2 billion, reflecting the potential this industry has. In the past "homes of the future" were crammed with wires connecting devices, making repairs or upgrades costly. Today's overlapping wireless networks such as wifi, 3G and 4G provide almost constant wireless connections.

Essentially, your home can adapt and change around you; the temperature can be adjusted to your exact requirements, or lighting levels changed to suit your needs.

In a recent article for The Red Bulletin, architect Greg Lynn said the house of the future will be like a self-driving car – it will know what's going on in a space and be able to predict what you want based on past instructions.

“Right now there’s some initiative going on that looks at integrating robotics into the built environment, making that environment not only more intelligent but letting that intelligence control things like furniture.

“This is already available with thermostats for controlling and regulating temperature in our homes but by 2030 it is predicted that the kind of intelligence that is being used in the transport industry will be used in interior walls and floors enabling them to adapt to suit the occupants’ requirements.”

So in 15 years’ time any room in your home could be the wellness room as the space automatically adjusts to the needs of whoever is occupying it. Denise O’Connor is an architect and design consultant