Comcast Home 2020

WHAT IS THE HOME OF THE FUTURE?

For one week, the different fields of architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture merged for a week long competition to design the home of the future for Comcast. Our design intent was to design a system which could be used by all levels of income and use technology to make the home more sustainable and bring the family and community together. This design took the form of a new technological hearth, reinterpreting the hearth's initial values and adding a contemporary level of technology and today's social habits.

We decided to retrofit existing rowhomes in Philadelphia in order to work with any budget and size. If this system could work in the tight constraints of a rowhome, then it could potentially work in any home. Below you will see the various functions of the hearth, as well as facade treatments and street treatments.

Melanie Whedon

Lea DiSantis

Katherine Blumberh

Melanie Whedon

THE HEARTH IS REVEALED ON THE EXTERIOR AS WELL While working on the facades of the home, it was our intention to use technology to ease communication from household to household in order to create a stronger sense of community. Therefore, we decided to use technological glass in order to display messages. The greenwall on new rowhomes enhances the sustainability features of the home.

Melanie Whedon

Tim Linehan

REIMAGINING THE CITY BLOCK The idea of the hearth extends further beyond just a singular home, but also into the community as a whole. The city block provides a great opportunity to engage in the street as well as an interior courtyard, which we envisioned as an urban oasis. While adding technology to condense a home's needs in a hearth will create a more efficient house, technology has the ability to drive a community closer together.