2016 was an exciting year for architecture trends. While we still haven’t started travelling to space – though we are a step closer thanks to a successful rocket launch and landing SpaceX accomplished earlier this year – technology has been significantly impacting the way we inhabit cities.

Designers have been experimenting with innovative, intelligent building materials, car manufacturers are rolling out self-driving models, and urban infrastructure is relying more on connectivity to optimize everything, from commuting to working. Many among these are long-term architecture trends that have had breakthroughs in the last year, which promise to continue into 2017.

Here are the 7 most significant architecture trends affecting the built environment that will shape the upcoming year.

#1 – Urban Connectivity

Connectivity extends far beyond Internet access. In fact, several companies across the globe are currently working on integrating tech products into urban environments in order to improve transportation, social services, health and public spaces. We have already written about Sidewalk Labs, a “smart-city” company owned by Alphabet Inc., which creates digital products through public-private partnerships to provide ubiquitous connectivity, real-time sensors, precise location services, distributed trust, autonomous systems, and digital actuation and fabrication.

Several incubators targeting urban environments are creating funding opportunities for companies that greatly influence how we live, work and commute. Y Combinator already funded companies like reputable Airbnb, among others, while Impact Engine supports early-stage, tech-focused businesses that change neighborhoods and urban conditions in the Chicago area.

#2 – Autonomous Transportation

Self-driving vehicles are promising to revolutionize the transport industry, which will greatly impact the built environment. Car manufacturers are rolling out models that are already hitting city streets. Last August, Singapore has become the first country in the world to launch a self-driving taxi service, beating Uber by a few days to public road tests. US-based start-up called nuTonomy received permission from the Singapore government to test self-driving cars and start testing with passengers.

Last December, Uber brought a small number of self-driving Volvo luxury SUVs to San Francisco. Another interesting trend – drones – is getting into the transportation race. Chinese drone manufacturer Ehang has created a vehicle capable of autonomously transporting human passengers and their luggage. Aerial drone delivery companies like Flirtey and Matternet are also developing solutions for air traffic. It will be interesting to see what 2017 brings for autonomous transportation.

#3 – Space Sharing

The sharing economy is expanding to include an increasing number of industries. WeWork has come to the forefront of the “space as a service” trend as one of the fastest growing consumers of office space, transforming a real estate business. The company has recently begun testing its first residential offering – WeLive, which brings a “co-living” philosophy into the world of residential real estate. WeLive links tenants with living areas that share kitchens and bathrooms. According to company documents – as Nasdaq reports – WeLive is expected to bring in about 21% of the company’s total revenue by 2018.

Last December, Airbnb has started investing in Home Sharing Clubs – host-led local organizations – around the world, closing out 2016 with 112. The emergence of Club-like organizations is an important trend to watch in 2017.

#4 – AR/VR

Augmented reality and virtual reality are being used in architectural design and real estate with increased frequency. Architecture studios are embracing VR as a way to optimize communication with clients and speed up the design process. This trend is expected to grow in 2017, with firms like NBBJ developing new, immersive solutions. NBBJ has already developed a self-contained venture Visual Vocal to built a VR platform integrated into the firm’s design process. Computing chipmaker NVIDIA conceived a VR demonstration of the completed building powered by NVIDIA products. The VR headset allows Gensler designers to navigate the model of the structure and notice design flaws that could be easily missed in a 2D environment.

According to digi-capital, the virtual and augmented reality industries will be worth $150 billion dollars by 2020. Virtual home experiences are expected to dominate 2017, and can potentially get into architecture schools.

#5 – Entrepreneurship in Architectural Education

Speaking of schools, entrepreneurship seems to be increasingly taught to architecture students. Architecture schools across the world are starting to offer bachelor and master programs in entrepreneurship and real estate development.

The Parsons School of Design offers an undergraduate minor in creative entrepreneurship, while a Penn State-sponsored business accelerator program aims to help student entrepreneurs turn their innovative project into reality. Canada’s Ryerson encourages its students to participate in a variety of projects that allow them to gain skills in architecture that are not taught in class.

The School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), one of five schools at MIT, launched an entrepreneurship accelerator, DesignX, which allows students to “make the critical leap from project to startup”. DesignX will include a four-month, for-credit accelerator workshop through which participants will get a chance to pitch to outside investors and industry partners.

#6 – Material Innovation

The Multiscale Materials Laboratory at Rice University is working on developing what they call “programmable cement” which can allow designers to control the kinetics of cement to get desired shapes, the morphology and size of the basic building blocks of C-S-H. This way they can self-assemble into microstructures with far greater packing density compared with conventional amorphous C-S-H microstructures.

Another common material that is gaining momentum is timber. Architects are increasingly using this rapidly renewable, carbon sequestering material that environmentally outperforms concrete and steel. In 2016, PLP Architecture and researchers from the University of Cambridge have revealed a concept for London’s first wooden skyscraper, architect Michael Green completed the largest mass-timber building in the United States – a seven-story tower in Minneapolis called T3.

Companies like Solar Roadways and Wattway are developing solar-harvesting road surfaces, while power-generating textiles are being experimented on at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This fabric harvests energy from solar and kinetic sources and is highly flexible, lightweight and consists of widely available, environmentally friendly materials.

 #7 – Sustainability

From energy to transportation and architecture, industries are steadily moving towards sustainable practices. 3D printed buildings, like the world’s first 3D printed office in Dubai, also influence the costs and environmental impact of the AEC industry. Cities are moving toward clean energy and a green economy.

After completing the Vertical Forest tower in Milan, Italy, architect Stefano Boeri has recently announced a similar design to be developed in China. This will be the first project of its kind in Asia.

Malaysia’s Forest City is set to become Southeast Asia’s largest mixed-use green development. Sasaki Associates designed the $40.9 billion master plan as an ecosystem that mimics the natural coastal ecologies of the region.

Urban Renewal and farming Projects are also a path to more sustainable cities. Some of the largest are The Los Angeles River Revitalization, Green Square – Australia’s biggest urban renewal project – while the Chinese megacity of Shanghai is set to realize the Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District.

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High-density cities such as London, New York, and Tokyo are seeing an increase in the building of micro-apartments for single and two-person households, especially with the new Millennial generation which favors smaller, more affordable apartments or condominiums over larger houses. Architects and designers are increasingly coming up with space-efficient solutions that include flexible and transformable furniture, automation, and 3D printed objects. Developers in large urban areas are responding to this trend by building micro-apartment buildings that target first-time homebuyers and renters.

This micro-housing trend comes in various iterations from the slight to the extreme – from sleek designs by leading architects for middle income populations in developed countries to the hellish spaces of subdivided apartments in Hong Kong.

In New York, the groundbreaking micro-scale living project is nearing its completion. nArchitects won the 2012 competition organized by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to design micro-dwellings comprising units for one to two-person households. The 35,000-square-foot micro-unit building, formerly known as My Micro NY and later renamed Carmel Place, is located in Manhattan’s Kips Bay area and contains 55 apartments ranging from 250 to 370 square feet in size. The building features steel frames and concrete slabs, with modular units that are prefabricated off-site. Tenants will share spaces such as the building’s roof terrace, community room, lounge and gym. Other amenities include bicycle storage areas, storage rooms and lockers.

According to The New York Times, the monthly rent for most of these apartments will be $950, significantly lower than average for one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan, which is around $3,400. Over 60,000 applications for these apartments have already been received from potential tenants.

Co-living is another trend that is being tested in large cities. Following the success of its co-working spaces, WeWork has since expanded into the field of residential architecture. WeLive recently opened in New York, welcoming in its first 80 tenants – a mixture of WeWork’s employees and the company’s members. Combining micro-housing and dorm-like accommodation, WeLive offers small apartments of around 450 square feet for $2,000 a month as well as larger, 1,000-square-foot, four-bedroom units. The development is fully connected via an app that lets tenants use different services in the building.

In London, Pocket Living develops micro-unit buildings with affordable one-bedroom flats called ‘starter homes’ for first-time buyers who earn less than London’s affordable housing limit, currently £66,000. Pocket’s developments are close to Central London and are cheaper than the market rates. Their first development opened in 2008 and was followed by several other buildings in Camden, Hackney, Ealing and Lewisham.

Pocket’s founder, former investment banker Marc Vlessing, noticed the trend of building residential units on infill lots in London. Vlessing made an arrangement with local authority planners and started building high-density developments using modular construction. The company is planning to expand to other parts of the UK within the next five years.

Located in Seoul’s largest district, Songpa Micro-Housing functions as a small urban village that blurs the line between individual living units and semi-public and open-program spaces, adding significant social value to the complex’s reconfigurable blocks. The unit’s blocks, accessible via a single core, are arranged to comply with local zoning requirements, allowing Songpa’s architects to form a tapioca-like outer layer that permeates the main volumes and acts as a soft byway between public and private spaces, interior and exterior.

Two unit sizes of 120 and 240 square feet were designed with extreme flexibility in mind, both internally and in relation to each other. Operable walls, built-in furniture, and transformable elements accentuate the functional flexibility of the spaces while subtler interventions, such as the introduction of clerestory windows and extended sight lines, create an impression of spaciousness.

Micro-apartments are not a new thing. The concept of small living spaces was pioneered by Japanese architects back in the 1970s, starting with Kisho Kurokawa’s iconic Nakagin Capsule Tower  in 1972. Perhaps the most extreme version of micro-living can be found in modern-day Tokyo; one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Over the last decades, landlords have developed sharing houses, known as ‘geki-sema’, which are incredibly small living units that people use solely for sleeping and storing their possessions. These are in effect stacked boxes, are often windowless, and target young professionals looking for a central city location. These units cost £320 to rent per month, and include electricity and heating.

Product manufacturers like IKEA are also getting on-board with the micro-living trend. The Swedish company released a new collection of space-saving, multifunctional furniture as a response to a growing population living in small dwellings. Their ‘On the Move’ collection went on sale in 2014. “We were thinking about the needs of the young urban generations that often forgo space to follow their dreams in the big cities,” Gemma Arranz, Interior Design Manager for Ikea UK and Ireland told Dezeen, “The collection is flexible, affordable, beautiful and can be easily moved within the home to maximize the smallest of spaces.”

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Do you think the micro-housing trend is here to stay? How will it change our cities in the future?

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Some of the most innovative and profitable companies in the world base their business models on commercializing untapped resources. Facebook has relied on its users to generate content and data for years, and organizations are starting to realize the value of gathering, processing, storing and taking action on big data.

In the AEC industry, some companies are discovering the hidden potential of excess energy that is generated by buildings, while others are looking to utilize large roof surfaces of mega-malls and supermarkets for harvesting solar energy. Airbnb has turned underused living units into assets, and allows people to generate additional income by renting out their homes to travelers.

The traditional notions of ‘private’ and ‘public’ space are eroding under the influence of a sharing economy and technological advancement. Space is being recognized as a profitable commodity in itself.

The commercial real estate industry is undergoing similar changes. Co-working spaces are sprouting in big cities, with building owners finding ways to make profit from underused desks and offices, targeting an increasing number of people who telecommute or work away from their main offices. In fact, The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020, about 65 million Americans will be freelancers, independent contractors and solopreneurs, and will constitute about 40% of the total workforce.

According to a 2014 All State-National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll, millennials prefer to work in places where they can find a community of like-minded people. Several other polls have confirmed that millennials want a “fun and social” workplace, flexible work hours and place value on lifestyle and traveling. They are less interested in buying property, but are willing to spend money on experiences and events. Increased mobility and the rise of the sharing economy are not only changing the way younger generations live, work and travel but also transforming our physical environment.

Finding an office space and setting up the necessary infrastructure for it to operate can be a daunting task for startups. Landlords are usually interested in long-term leases – less than ideal for young companies and freelancers. Recognizing the need for convenience, flexibility, and less liability, companies like WeWork have developed successful business models around the idea of space as a service.

Founded in 2010, WeWork has become the forerunner of the space as a service trend and is one of the fastest growing consumers of office space in New York City. Recognizing the disappearance of 9-to-5 jobs, its founders decided to create a service that would function like a “physical social network”.

Essentially, WeWork transformed a real estate business into a technology platform. The idea of sharing space isn’t new, but WeWork has translated space sharing into a concept closely connected to the lifestyle and work habits of younger generations.

WeWork leases space wholesale from landlords and then sublets it, at a margin, in small blocks of floorspace. The company currently manages over 3 million square feet of space. They offer pay-as-you-go access, or “unlimited commons” membership that allows people to use WeWork locations anywhere in the world. They provide tenants with the Internet, printing services, and beverages, as well as places to relax and take a break from working. The company takes care of everything in terms of actual office management, from utility bills to replenishing the ink in the printer.

The company has recently begun to test its first residency offer. Its first co-living development, located in New York City, currently accommodates 80 WeWork members in 45 apartment units, with plans to house over 600 people across 20 floors. All tenants have access to community events by way of a mobile app, through which they can share cleaning services, laundry and utilities. Provisionally named WeLive, their residential offering is expected to account for 21% of the company’s revenue by 2018.

Micro-rental, on which WeLive’s concept is based, is the hottest trend in residential real estate. The concept is simple: a company rents a large multi-room unit, creates communal spaces and sublets individual bedrooms out to people on a short-term basis. Co-living companies don’t own the property themselves but instead act as property managers.

Abandoning long-term leases for month-to-month arrangements with micro-rentals appeals to millennials who are much more comfortable with temporary accommodation solutions than are older generations. Short-term contracts are best suited for young graduates and professionals who frequently change location or can’t afford to buy their own homes. As an increasing number of 25 to 34-year-olds are living with roommates and staying single for longer than previous generations, mobility becomes the deciding factor in choosing suitable housing arrangements.

A large number of startups are trying out the idea of creating co-living spaces. Up-and-coming businesses like Pure House, Krash, Open Door, and the co.space are tapping into the real estate sector with similar offerings.

Co-living startup Common has recently raised $7.5 million in Series A funding and has announced the opening of a 51-bedroom residence in Williamsburg, NYC. This is the company’s third building in the NYC borough of Brooklyn and the first ground-up development.

The conditions for rending out spaces here are pretty much the same as they are for other co-living startups. What Common does differently to avoid the fate of Campus, a startup forced to close its premises after failing to create “a financially viable business”, is that Common partners directly with real estate companies that buy the buildings. This allows them to save on rent and have greater control over the spaces.

Co-working and co-living spaces are the most dominant types of the space as a service concept. It has proven to be a transformative force, drastically changing the residential and commercial real estate industry. The proliferation of the sharing economy is illuminating the hidden potentials of physical spaces, and changing the way architecture is used and inhabited. This phenomenon could irreversibly change the way in which we design buildings and think about urban development.

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What other underused spatial resources are you aware of? How would you utilize them in a sustainable and scalable way?

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