In Sweden, Hemnet is the real estate website. Millions of users visit it each month to browse everything from design ideas to pricing. Earlier this year the folks behind the site set out to design “the ideal Swedish home” using their own data.
Some 2 million Hemnet users were asked to click through their favorite design features and property types. Approximately 200 million data points were collected before Hemnet handed over the user-generated info — which included preferred number of rooms, bathrooms, ideal square footage and price — to Swedish architecture firm Tham & Videgård, who fleshed out the actual design with a series of renderings.
The result? A boxy, 1,115-square-foot, 1.5-level home with three-bedrooms, an open-concept kitchen, a living room with a mezzanine, and a partially enclosed rooftop terrace (which can be converted into an extra room).
The home has no carpet and is adorned with furniture in neutral colors. The countertops are stone and the cabinets are white. It is, perhaps predictably, very minimal. A blank canvass.
“A simple, cost- and energy-efficient design that is easy to build and customize. But also a beautiful building with generous natural light and a feeling of space throughout the house,” the architects explain on the project website.
Even the cost of the home was fleshed out: $330,727 in US currency. It is, according to Tham and Videgård, “a standardized house within reach for most people.”
The next step? Turning the design into a prefab house people can actually buy. That’s coming in 2016.
