Gregoire Dechaine
Living as a Service / Future of Living
As we continue to respond to digitization and urbanization, what will become of our homes? What is the future of living?
The fundamentals of the home are changing at an unprecedented scale and pace.
And this is happening at a time where tradition and speculation in the design of homes and development of built environments have never been more prevalent.
This project aims to design a future mode of living, tailor-made to millennials. Service design and research will form the strategy for House, an emerging start-up. The company’s objective is to create a new mode of living that affords people the freedom to live, by making their life as convenient as possible. Users will inform the company, and design will guide it, as we seek to redefine homeownership in the digital era.
Insight
For younger people, living needs to be convenient.
It’s no secret that millennials care about experiencing life. That experience has manifested itself in many forms, from bars and restaurants to five-star escapes, life is about living it to the fullest. And sharing it on one of the many flavours of social media. They don’t have time to pay bills or learn how to save and maximize their personal wealth. They want to live life in the moment and know that their wellbeing is still being accounted for—both now and in the future.
Idea
Design a service that enables people to live life as conveniently as possible.
House will leverage the ‘convenience as service’ model in leased homes. Rent, savings, and utilities, all combined to generate network effects, allowing us to build with less capital and increase our community size.
The built environment is the ‘package’ of House’s service, it will be tethered to an automated interface that gives you full control over your personal dwelling. Mundane tasks like, paying utilities, managing savings, or furnishing your home will all become modules. Allowing people flexibility to rent with us on many terms, not just financial ones.
Impact
Ultra-convenient homes will enable you the time and freedom to live your life.
One in two millennials will never buy a home. Using a blend of rent and savings, we can leverage interest earnings [savings] instead of interest charges [mortgage]. Of this emerging group of non-buyers, we are seeing that applying business from a service and experience perspective will be critical in defining the new norm for “home ownership”. Designing a new service from the ground up, tailored to the need for convenience we are seeing in the millennial generation will allow for House to redefine the Future of Living.
Biography
Gregoire Dechaine is a Toronto based Industrial Designer and co-founder of a small architectural studio called CRAi. He currently designs at the intersection of architecture and technology [arch-tech]. You can probably find him working at *some sort of computer*, or building one. He teaches himself how to do things [auto-didact], but his strengths are 3D modeling and rendering, as well as strategic research and development. He likes to think of himself as a horizontal [lateral] thinker so his true strength probably lies in how he get to solutions, not the solutions themselves. His personal weakness, terrible at multi-tasking.
He likes coffee and conversation, so feel free to get in touch!