Tomorrow's Home: launch event

About Tomorrow's Home 2050

Tomorrow’s Home is an immersive installation where the home of the future – 30 years from now – has become a reality. Drawing upon leading research from the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering it playfully imagines how our dwellings could be designed to help us live independently and well as we age, and support our changing planet.

Explore imagined health technologies, from the toilet that analyses your waste to the doormat that can detect intruders, and explore how they could become deeply embedded in people’s homes.

The exhibition will take place at the Museum of the Home (136 Kingsland Road, Hoxton) between Saturday 20 November and Sunday 9 January. Free entry, open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm.

About the launch event

Hear from 'home life experts' and people working at the forefront of home technology:  

• How does housing inequality exacerbate health inequality? Sharon Gordon, director of the West Euston Project, will describe how our living quarters and wellbeing are entwined.
• What would a home in space look like? Marianna Obrist, a UCL professor with an interest in space health, imagines an astronautical abode!
• What can the past teach us about happy, healthy homes? Hear from archaeologist Hannah Platts (Royal Holloway) about power and space in Roman houses.
• And more!

Due to COVID capacity management, the event will be online – live-streamed from the Museum of the Home.

More about our speakers

Professor Rebecca Shipley, Director, UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering

Rebecca Shipley is Professor of Healthcare Engineering at UCL. Her research interests lie in mathematical and computational modelling in medicine and biology. Current applications for this include projects helping peripheral nerve injury repair, the analysis of patient data in intensive care units and computational models for cancer growth.

In her roles as Director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering, Vice Dean (Health), Becky coordinates interdisciplinary research, innovation and knowledge exchange within healthcare engineering across UCL and its partner hospitals.

In rapid response to the growing urgency of the pandemic in 2020, Becky co-lead the UCL-Ventura programme. The UCL-Ventura team designed and manufactured at scale non-invasive breathing aids to help treat COVID-19 patients, both within the UK and globally. The UCL-Ventura CPAPs were distributed to over 130 NHS hospitals and are helping to save lives in hospitals in over 25 countries. Becky was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021.

Vanessa Meade, Curator, Museum of the Home: 'Domestic Gamechangers - Past, Present – Future?'

Working in older people’s retirement housing during lockdown many people were not digitally connected and even for those who were, joining Zoom was far too complicated. We worked with SparkoTV to connect isolated people to each other and social and health groups in an accessible way via the familiar medium of their TV. Aside from getting people through some difficult times, particularly the second lockdown, many positives came out of it and now people and groups meet up in real life as well as continuing to use SparkoTV.

Since joining the Museum of the Home in June 2018, Vanessa has worked on the development and production of the Museum of the Home’s reimagined spaces and Home Galleries and recently launched the Museum’s Pet Life exhibition and Winter Festival.

Dr Hannah Platts, historian and archaeologist, Royal Holloway:'Feeling at home? Controlling multisensory experiences for comfort in the ancient Roman house'

Evidence from Roman houses emphasises the importance of all bodily sensations in the experience of domestic ‘comfort’. The display of status through careful manipulation of senses within dwellings highlights a fundamental recognition that the perception of space revolves around multisensory experience. Hannah will explain how this, in turn, influenced Rome’s domestic architectural practices.

Hannah is an ancient historian and archaeologist with a focus on the material culture and social history of ancient Rome.

Professor Marianna Obrist, UCL: 'Multisensory interfaces and experiences'

Nature has provided us with many senses for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. The multisensory world we live in is increasingly transformed through technological advances like novel multisensory devices and interfaces. Such multisensory technologies not only stimulate our eyes (think of screens) and ears (and audio systems), but also consider how and what we touch, smell and taste. Multisensory interfaces can enrich our experiences in various context including the home. Marianna will share a glimpse of my research investigating and designing multisensory experiences and its potential in the context of tomorrow’s home.

Marianna is Professor of Multisensory Interfaces at UCL. She is co-founder of OWidgets LTD, a university spin-out that is enabling the design of novel olfactory experiences.

Sharon Gordon, Director, West Euston Project:'Housing inequalities and health inequalities'

Sharon is the director of Camden-based charity, the West Euston Project, and will discuss how where we live affects our wellbeing. Sharon has a Masters in Urban Regeneration, a black belt in taekwondo and is currently writing a book.

Ann Brolan, Wendy Cupid: 'Supporting an older population during the pandemic'

Working in older people’s retirement housing during lockdown many people were not digitally connected and even for those who were, joining Zoom was far too complicated. We worked with SparkoTV to connect isolated people to each other and social and health groups in an accessible way via the familiar medium of their TV. Aside from getting people through some difficult times, particularly the second lockdown, many positives came out of it and now people and groups meet up in real life as well as continuing to use SparkoTV.

Sarah Douglas, Founder & Director, The Liminal Space: 'Creating Tomorrow's Home'

The Liminal Space are the design and public engagement specialists who have partnered with UCL to create ‘Tomorrow’s Home’. Director, Sarah Douglas will talk through the key principles of creating impactful public engagement with researchers for the exhibition. From the benefits of automated healthcare and 3D printed ‘smart snacks’ at home, to the unsettling elements such as surveillance and access inequality. The exhibition has been designed to help visitors understand what’s being developed and also encourage them to ask questions about how this will affect them and what researchers should be focusing on.

Sarah Douglas, Director, The Liminal Space - Sarah designs inspiring ways to engage people with important topics. With experience across art, innovation and education, she has combined a career as a professional artist with ones in art and design consultancy, academia and the strategic direction of creative projects.