 In the last six months, we've seen this home of the future here in Austin, Texas go from pieces in a factory to a beautifully designed house packed with the latest connected technology. The thing about aiming for the future is that it's a constantly moving target. Technology and design evolve at a rapid pace, and the last thing you'd want is for your home of the future to feel like it's living in the past. What clues can we take from the home of today to help us determine what we need in the home of tomorrow? I tried to collect every image that existed of the home of the future, and I started in the 1920s. This is Michelle Addington, Dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Even as certain styles might have changed, they're all the same. Always the first part of the home of the future is automating the door. One in the 1960s involved a camera system. As we approach our arrival, could be observed by an automatic closed circuit television system which would notify our hosts. This special hosted by Walter Cronkite in 1967 took a look at the home of 2001. Like our home today, it featured surround sound speakers, a console to control the entertainment center and a monitor for surveillance cameras. Today we're living all those dreams, but it's still a home of the future and not a home of the present. Why after 50 years are we still thinking about our home this way? What's stopping us from making more radical shifts in what we think of as a home? Still four walls and a door. That's the part that is familiar to us. That's the part we keep. You know, a lot of it has to do with risk. You know, for many people, this is their life savings. It's the single most expensive thing you'll ever buy as an individual. Absolutely. And so it can tolerate much less risk than you can in many other things. As we see in so many other areas, technologies have rapidly evolved throughout the 20th century. And yet in the case of the smart home, we're looking for ways to implement the latest technologies, but to do the things that we've always done. So what if we allow ourselves to rethink what we assume a house needs to be? What kind of improvements could we make if we discard basic assumptions of what a house should do? Right now, we have heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. So all of our bodies are surrounded in this blanket of homogeneous conditions that are contained by the envelope of the house. It's a clumsy way. It's an expensive way. And it's an incredibly energy intensive way. And interestingly enough, not a particularly effective way of dealing with how the body exchanges heat. So everything that we're doing all around here. Wasted. Wasted. Assuming we could successfully utilize a system to heat or cool our bodies in a more efficient envelope, it would obviously reduce the energy demand on our home drastically. And it could even shift how we think of those four walls and a roof. But I've got to be honest, it's a hard thing to see happening. To think about a future without a cooling system for the house as thermally inefficient as it may be for our personal bodies, it seems difficult to accept. So this is why you kind of have to step back and sort of reimagine what that environment is going to be. And that's partly why imagining the far future of home design is difficult. Our cultural and physical environments tend to change slowly with time. While architectural trends are evolving from tiny homes to communal housing, it's rare to see mass adoption. Even our homes modular design is far from becoming mainstream. Modular has been around for decades, but still isn't overtaking the market. It's most economical at scale and the pipeline just isn't large enough to reduce costs around factories and shipping. But within our basic framework of four walls and a roof, what are some areas that could change radically in the next few decades? Let's turn to our kitchen. Now one thing that you can't miss in our home of the future is this, the smart fridge. First of all, it's got a giant OLED screen. You can draw on it, find the absolute worst way to surf the internet. This is absolutely a crime. And you can make it transparent so you can see inside without having to open the door. Let's say you're at the market and you can't remember what you're out of. You can call up the smart fridge on an app, turn on the internal cameras and see what you're missing. And oh yeah, there's a Bluetooth speaker for reasons. This is all fun to play with for now, but bear this in mind. The average refrigerator lasts about 15 years. Fifteen years ago, this was the most popular cell phone. So when we try and consider what appliances will last with us into the next home of the future, I'm not sure if the smart fridge checks all the boxes. But hey, this is only version one. When I think about tech that changed my life, I think about maps. I used to have a map for every region I was in and would draw the path before I set out. Then there was the age of printing customized directions on MapQuest and now, smartphone GPS. I didn't even know it was a problem until technology gave me a much better solution. And after that, there was no going back. Is there anything like that that you can see a problem that we didn't even know that we had that the smart home can solve for us? I think particularly around the issue of food. One of the reasons that people are not making the best food choices today, especially families with children, is because of the impracticality of making sure that you have healthy food at all times. This is Ann Boycen, a futurist who runs a strategic consulting business here in Texas. I think that for families, the convenient choice is not always the healthiest choice. So potentially, Home of the Future could help you get closer to having those two things be in line. Yes, and then we're not wanting to go back after that. The way we eat has actually always played a role in imagining what the Home of the Future will be, typically revolving around speed and convenience, like the instant pizza in Back to the Future Part 2. And remember that Cronkite piece? Miss DuFle normally cooks in 40 minutes with microwaves that's ready in 90 seconds. Ah, the miracles of the microwave. But quickness and convenience also usually means less healthy, unless in the Home of the Future, it doesn't have to. Now I see these solutions to these problems particularly in two areas. One is the ability to order staples and foods that we're using all the time. So for example, instead of you having to know, oh, I'm running out of milk, you have a scanner in your refrigerator that are finding out, oh, you're running low on milk. Let's go ahead and just order. And then you might even do some of the agriculture yourself in your home. Grow your own food in your Home of the Future. Yes, growing your own food, either in your own home or if you live in some sort of high-tech community garden or home garden, which is hydroponic, which is using computer precision to find out exactly how much it should be water, what type of nutrients, down to the fine-tuned, very high-resolution level. And that way you can have much more control over the food that you're using and consuming on a daily basis and save you a lot of time at the same time. And if you link these two ideas, you've got your high-tech community garden delivering the best quality food to you when you need it. It's a great dream, and who knows, maybe 50 years from now, it could be a reality. To be honest, it's hard to even build today's Home of the Future, let alone tomorrow's. Our house was built specifically with that mission in mind, to be the Home of the Future. And in a lot of ways it is. Our brain pulls all of our devices into one control system, even giving us a live readout of our power usage. Our solar panels are built into our carport, and we even have an entire audio system hidden in the backyard landscaping. There's still a ton more we would have wanted to add to this house, but with delays in our timeline, zoning limitations, and budget overages on site, actually building a house still requires compromises. And while some technology, like our smart fridge, may not seem particularly future-proof, you can see how there are building blocks for something more ambitious down the line. Historically, tech and design takes time to be perfected, and once they are, we're already hard at work imagining the next steps they can take. But at least for now, I'm just going to enjoy the time I have in my home, in the present. Thanks so much for following along in our Home of the Future series. How would you rethink the home for the future? Let us know in the comments below. If you've enjoyed this show, check out our new Future of Music series, hosted by The Verge's own Danny Diehl.