Soon your house may clean itself and your refrigerator may tell you to pick up milk. Someday you may be able to communicate with visitors at your front door — when you are miles away. You also could monitor what’s going on inside the house, even though you know your kids would never dare throw a party.

In houses of tomorrow, computerized closets that pick out our clothes according to the weather forecast, lights that switch on when someone enters a room and a single machine that washes clothes, then dries them may be commonplace.

At Georgia Tech, the 5,000-square-foot Aware Home is equipped with the latest gadgets. A computer application — What Was I Cooking? — makes sure the cook hasn’t missed any ingredients or added chili powder when he meant to add salt. Perhaps in the near future robotic chefs will be preparing our meals.

Elsewhere researchers are at work on a "nursebot" that could help senior citizens remain in their own homes. The robotic nurse could do everything from opening jars to monitoring the human resident’s vital signs. This robotic companion is expected to be available in about five years at a cost of somewhere around $3,000.

Two Georgia Tech couples started a business building homes together on a dare.

Longtime friends Paige Cosby Ruhl, Arch 88, MS Arch 90, her husband, Jim Ruhl, BC 88, and friends and neighbors Derek and Ann Murray Welch, both BC 89, own DreamBuilt, a high-end custom home design and construction business in Eatonton, Ga.

They started the company, near Lake Oconee, in 1999 with a huge leap of faith and now they specialize in making their clients’ dream homes a reality.

Tech alumnus Malcolm Wells thinks we should all move underground. "Every construction project causes environmental trauma," he says. "Only underground architecture can heal the Earth’s wounds."

Wells has designed more than 100 underground houses, but living beneath the earth has been slow in gaining ground. He estimates there are less than 4,000 earth-covered or earth-sheltered homes in this country.

Yet, Americans seem to be looking for more environmentally friendly ways to live. Alumnus Mary Scott Christfield and her husband want to live as lightly on the Earth as possible. In building their retirement home in North Carolina, the Christfields are installing hydro-radiant cement floors as just one way to reduce their dependence on electricity.

Power Up

It is possible to energize an entire home with photovoltaic technology currently available and the cost and availability of the units are bringing the technology into popular reach.

"There are many homes in subdivisions around the United States and the world which are totally powered by PV or a combination of PV and grid energy," says Ajeet Rohatgi, director of the Photovoltaic Research Center at Tech. "Everything exists right now to make this possible. They have even started selling things you can take and energize your home in places like Home Depot."

Hands On

Charles G. Hanna Jr., who was the manager in charge of corporate construction projects for Ingersoll Rand in the 1970s and director of engineering for Revlon’s corporate facilities in the 1980s, has written a book giving a hands-on approach to building a house.

Hanna, CE 62, of Denville, N.J., applies building principles in his book, "How to Manage the Design and Construction of Your Own Home — or Anything Else!" that he says empower people to manage the construction of their own homes and save a lot of money.

"I’ve taken the principles of the multimillion dollar projects and I’ve made them simple enough that they are applicable for a home — and anybody can understand it," he says.

Building for Boomers

More than 7 million babies were born from 1946 to 1964, a period dubbed the "baby boom." Now those boomers are facing retirement, and their housing needs are more pressing than ever.

Quincy Johnson, Arch 72, president and CEO of Quincy Johnson Architects in Boca Raton, Fla., is considered an expert on housing design for seniors. A boomer himself, Johnson recently judged the National Association of Home Builders’ "Best of Seniors Housing Design Awards" competition in Washington, D.C.

"Something like 10,000 to 15,000 people a day are reaching their 50th birthdays," he says. "The median age of the baby boomers is 48, which means there are as many on the front side as there are on the back side. There has never been a housing market this big or this concentrated."

Helpful Home

The future house is here and technologically astute.

Aware Home, constructed near the Georgia Tech campus in 2000 is part of the Broadband Institute Residential Laboratory’s testing ground for development of computing applications in a home environment. The unassuming three-story house features two identical and independent living spaces with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, kitchen, dining room, living room and a laundry room. A shared basement provides an entertainment area and a control room for centralized computing services.

While Aware Home includes high tech information and entertainment services, it also provides an opportunity for researchers to identify those who would benefit from interaction between humans and computers.

Trading Careers

Fans of The Learning Channel’s "Trading Spaces" design series love Vern Yip, MS MGT 94, MS ARCH 95. Maybe it’s the clean, functional designs he is known for, or perhaps it’s his dedication to his art and those it is meant to serve. Whatever it is, Yip’s popularity on the hit cable show is undeniable.

"I try to pay attention, to get a sense of how these people live their lives. I get to go home after two days, but I leave my design," Yip says. "This is something they live in every day. It is an integral part of their lives and I feel a huge amount of responsibility to them. Most people may not have the opportunity or the resources to hire a professional designer and I look at it as leaving the room as a gift or a treasure for them."

©2003 Georgia Tech Alumni Association