Home and Away. Language, ecology, and interface of digical domesticity at the augmented house

Abstract

The progressive incorporation of digitally augmented environments into housing irretrievably transforms traditional domestic standards. The augmented home, and also expanded throughout the city, participates of a digical (digital + physical) ecology mediated by digital technology, the symptoms of which promote the dissolution of programmatic limits, the fragmentation of ways of life and the appearance of new domestic agents. However, and despite this progressive digitization, the extent of the effects caused by overexposure to screens—a radicalized circumstance due to the confinement forced by the COVID-19 pandemic—, as well as the nature of the new domestic models, are unknown. This article expands the epistemology of digitally augmented housing, providing a review of its digical domesticity from three variables such as language, interface and ecology. From this perspective, a comparative analysis of three pioneering prototypes of this new architectural typology is carried out to elucidate the topological conditions proposed by its digital and communication model.