The Broken Home is designed for digital dystopia

Every design decision responds to damning reports exposing human’s dependency on technology and the impact this is having on social interaction, in this case, Thailand.

The residential project titled ‘The Broken Home’ by Integrated Field intends to elevate the way of life and relationship patterns of a Thai family in the Digital Age.

As such, it has been realised as a minimal, boxy architecture with the interior components arranged to cater to the family members’ lifestyles and behaviours. 

The reports informing the project’s design include a statistic revealing that Thai people currently spend the average of three hours with their family, accounting to 12% of their time within a day and creating more defined boundaries of one’s privacy, and consequently altering preferences for their living spaces.

As a result, the manipulation and management of living spaces within The Broken Home gives birth to a house with a relatively smaller ratio of common spaces (a significant reduction from 40% to 12%) to accommodate only the essential shared usages.

This particular report influences decisions throughout the project, including the entrance which instead of a large meeting area has been reduced to create a small ‘transition space’ that leads inhabitants to their own private spaces without the need to physically see each other. 

It also includes a special passage designed to allow delivered packages and food inside of the house, following users’ increasing online shopping and food delivery orders, and a dining table with pull down partitions to provide each user’s preferred privacy, and answer to the statistic that reveals Thailand as the third country in the world with the highest mobile phone usage.

Meanwhile, the project’s private areas have been given priority when it comes to space and access.

“The layout and hierarchy of access are readjusted into what would be the opposite to that of a regular home,” explains the studio. “When entering the house, each inhabitant can immediately enter their own room via their own individual stairway.” 

“The design creates a clearly separated entrance for each inhabitant to enter their room, following the four axes of the X-shaped layout. If preferred, a quality time with the family can occur at the common area, which is easily accessed through each inhabitant’s personal space.”

Each bedroom, including the children’s, maximises every square metre of the room, with pull out furnishings that help to create a multi-functional space that can be used for various activities.

All of the bedrooms also feature indirect lighting hidden within the walls for activities such as live streaming sessions on social media platforms.

The cultural commentary doesn’t stop there, however. The father’s room is designed to reflect Thai people’s intense working hours.

Inside is equipped with all the needed facilities, from the skylight that brings natural light into the room, the use of LED lighting to provide the required lighting quality with adjustable brightness that allows one to work throughout the day. 

“The workspace enhances a good, seamless workflow for better efficiency and productivity,” said the studio.

“The design of the mother’s room creates a space that accommodates user’s preferred activities and hobbies such as at-home workout sessions or a space for a pet, which is considered one of the family members.”