The Architecture of Happiness

For the project House of the Future we had to design a housing project as if we were designing it in 2070. In our future Rotterdam has banished all cars and replaced them with an enhanced public transport system and bike highways. This creates a massive amount of space where there used to be cars. Our site used to be 70 meter wide street that ends in a transport hotspot with a diameter of 150 meters, both are empty in 2070’s car free Rotterdam. In these 50 years technology has evolved to allow us to shrink the 5x5cm cubic robots meant to mend bridges in 2019, to 2x2cm robots that can be used inside houses in 2070.

We believe architects should design for people, not to get the highest efficiency. Happiness3 creates small houses that every possible inhabitant can live a happy life in. To cater to the needs of different types of people the entire interior is adaptable and changes to fit the inhabitants personal preferences. In order to allow the entire interior of a house to shapeshift we decided to remove all furniture and ornament from the inside of the house. We replaced this with small self assembling cubes in 20 materials. These cubes can form any shape imaginable, allowing them to fulfill any function furniture normally would. This allows the inhabitants to reshape their domicile to their own visual and functional needs and wants.

Collaboration with Maarten Menssink

Other parts of the House of the Future project series: Villa dall’ Ava and FallingTable.