When a digital nomad settles down, a new home is born. It might be against the nature of ‘keep on moving’, but even the hardcore nomad will grow roots somewhere. I want to discuss this demanding new home, the digital nomad base. In the digital era, a home is no longer a house with an office but an office within a house. Soon, a typical home layout will be reconfigured to fit the dynamic of this lifestyle and evolve to different design typologies. The semantics of residential architecture might also transform as we reside and work in the same address. In a micro perspective, the conception of a traditional house that consists of separate areas for living, cooking, dining, and sleeping will quickly disintegrate. Instead of a kitchen, it is a coffee break area. Instead of a living room, it is a video call room with a more pleasant or orderly background for an online meeting. Instead of a bedroom, it is an extended workspace because you might be tired of sitting the whole day at your desk, so why not work from your bed? The workstation of a digital nomad has at least a computer with internet, a desk and a decent chair. And because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are stranded at home under global lockdown and forced to work remotely. Setting up a workstation has become a must. The working-from-home remote space in Brazil has been baptised with an Anglican name: 'home office'. The remote work trend will soon apply to digital nomads settling down and most office workers. Remote work will be more viable, safer, or sustainable. Corporations will review the need for physical spaces and realise the financial benefits of not having one. Cities will find relief in the transport system with fewer commuters. And perhaps in the future soon, the nine-to-five shift will seem just an archaic nonsense of the modern world. This might also represent the redundancy of office buildings, and as an architect, I cannot help but think of what they can be converted to. Can the business district become a ghost town? Or a quarantine island? Before the pandemic, I was approached by a digital nomad who wanted to settle down in Valencia, Spain, with the briefing to help him find a property which could be renovated into his dynamic lifestyle, including furniture design to increase the flexibility of spaces. Say the workstation also works as a bedroom, the living room functions as a dining room, etc. We are in standby mode When we settle down, we search for an ideal home, but the world is changing rapidly, and our way of living is not different. When we think of a dream home, we might no longer think of the ideal. The ideal now is adaptable. Will the digital revolution shape the architecture of our new homes? From where we stand now: Or will coronavirus be present?
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