Abstract

In the modern architecture a tendency can be followed of opening to the public and displaying more of our private realms i.e. our homes, that goes hand in hand with the changes of the notion of privacy in society as can be followed in the Internet.

The house of the future is usually portrayed as the ubiquitous house, with all kind of sensors spread over the premises, and activators reacting to control all kind of daily functionalities in our future everyday life. But how will the architecture of our most private of all places, our home, change when all these sensors get hooked to the net and the information collected about us, placed at disposal of large companies? Companies that might use the collected information to control our consume habits. Will we have to lock ourselves in closets and let the water run in the bath to have a confidential conversation? Will there be sensor-free or even electromagnetic-free rooms in the houses? Or shall we take different roles in real life, like avatars in second life, in order not to give away our real identity when we don’t play the public role we otherwise assume? Or will the notion of privacy, as we know it, simply disappear?

The meaning of privacy for our own well-being in the future is too important to be left over only to scientists experimenting with new gadgets in “houses” or “labs” of the future financed by telecommunication companies. It needs to be tackled as a theme by architects, artists, anthropologists, journalists, lawyers and other experts to confront the public opinion with potential problems and dangers that need to be discussed and eventually submitted to the control of the public hand.

• Aleksandar Cetkovic is a multidisciplinary architect and computer scientist. With a master degree in both disciplines, he worked as a software engineer on major projects and as an architect on many designs and contests. For seven years he taught at the University of Arts and Design in Zürich, Switzerland, Faculty of New Media in the fields of Urban Media, Perception of Space, Information Spaces and Programming Techniques. At the moment he works on multidisciplinary projects challenging his wide range of knowledge, like the ideas-contest “ETH-World” or the platform “Archivio Fluido”. He is a PhD Candidate at the Planetary Collegium (Plymouth University, UK).     cetkovic.com

Full text (PDF) p. 392-397