LIFESTYLE TRENDS
2021/22

Homely Comfort

Because so many people worldwide live in a state of uncertainty,

at least partly due to the effects of the pandemic, social unrest, and climate change, we search for protective mechanisms and environments in our dwellings and wherever we go and stay.

The new home requires a different take on flexibility, technology, and spatial planning, where people-planet design (a shift from human-centered design) plays a crucial role. Our life can only be better when we respect the planet’s life.

Public spaces need to offer design-led comfort and aesthetics to feel at home and take that secure feeling with us.

The four attributes that will guide us wherever we go and stay are Comfort, Privacy, Security, and Belonging.

For more insights,

please get information on our trend lectures.

The Era Of Self

TREND
DRIVERS

Hybrid lifestyle

Our dwelling is turning into a hybrid entity uniting private life and work (= HOFFICE) and has become a digital operation center many times.

The idea of coming home to disconnect after work is shifting. Resimercial Design identifies for uniting design that is suitable for residential and commercial areas according to technical aspects and resistant materiality.

Privacy

The preference of an open floor plan living, popular in recent years, closes again in need of privacy. Flexible room dividers and doors systems close spaces into individual shelters, no matter how small they are. Public design needs to step up, as well, and offer individual solutions on the go.

Humanizing public space

Our home is our safe harbor, and we do not want to compromise on that feeling when stepping outdoors.

Public spaces such as hospitals, airports, education facilities, or convention centers will undergo a long-due makeover offering a homely and less anonymous layout.

For more insights, please get information on our trend lectures: The Decade Of The Home

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A new era of ‘Care'

76% agree that Covid-19 has impacted the importance they place on wellness.*

*Kantar media

The idea of taking care gets engrained in our daily routines. We consider care now preventive and a possibility to clean and declutter rather than be a solution for momentary fatigue.

Spiritual practices such as mindfulness and self-care become mainstream as new means for connecting with ourselves and our collective consciousness.

Care and wellness are seen from a holistic perspective, including physical, social, mental, and emotional characteristics; therefore consumer wellness includes the individual, their close and next communities, as well as the impact on the planet (people-community-planet).

Care consists of everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible.
That world includes our bodies, ourselves, our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.

Joan C. Tronto

Author of Caring Democracy

TREND
DRIVERS

EMPATHY QUEST

2019 started to be the drumbeat year of “more empathy” from an employer-employee and brand-end consumer perspective.
As we shifted into a more value-focused society in 2020, detecting human emotions and responding in an honest way to it, has become a major goal.
The question is, what happens when empathy becomes diluted as its worth ascends?

How can brands responds to people’s empathy they have towards causes that require more activism such as inclusivity of age, race, gender, or sustainability?

CONTEMPLATION DESIGN

Contemplation design leverages the power to pause.

Providing physical spaces for employees to practice healthy behaviors can support an individual’s discovery and cultivation of purpose and meaning in life, related to various positive physical and social outcomes.

Introspection becomes a recognized pathway to explore our needs of self and identity.

VIRTUAL SANCTUARY

The need to escape due to travel and movement restrictions has been a catalyst for 3D fantasy sceneries and virtual spa experiences.

Sound-driven disconnection (ASMR) or virtual massages pairing VR environments with a soothing massage take us to a state of calm and retreat.

Phygital experiences are being rethought.

For more insights,

please get information on our trend lectures.

The Decade Of The Home

For more insights, please get information on our trend lectures: The Era Of Self

In case you care for sharing this trend:

Self-sufficient Esprit

We’ve become all more self-sufficient during the pandemic and will continue looking for a more autonomous lifestyle.

Residential neighborhoods, communities, and urban projects in development consider caring and self-sufficient systems a priority.
Self-sufficiency does not exclude being connected to a network; but connected independence offers greater protection.
A city, neighborhood, or micro-community bases its strength on the ability to generate its own resources.

ABC (Autonomous Building for Citizens) suggests another way of thinking and living the habitat, very well integrated into its natural environment.

An ABC building would need to produce energy autonomously, use rainwater and recycle wastewater, and reduce waste produced. It would also have to be as comfortable for its occupants as a conventional building so that they didn’t have the feeling of taking a step backward.

Gaëtan Desruelles

VP R&D Bouygues Construction

TREND
DRIVERS

SELF-SUSTAINING HOODS

The future of self-sufficient city models lies in creating a web of self-sustaining neighborhoods that are still connected locally and globally.

The city of the future is a metropolis of neighborhoods.

SMART HOME FARMING

Growing food at home or Home Farming is nothing new; not even for those who have limited space. However, the pandemic has accelerated green movements; we have gone back to locally grown vegetables and fruit as a way of supporting nearby agriculture or started our own self-sufficient adventure on a balcony or inside the kitchen, including smart IoT-based devices to be as autonomous as possible.

AUTONOMOUS CLUSTERS

Flexibility and adaptability in design keep being essential. Modular structural systems allow to prefabricate, assemble and adapt to ever-changing situations.

Structures need to grow with the tasks they take on becoming autonomous and less rigid. Nothing lasts forever in a fast moving society.