Fear of disease has diversified conventional approaches to hygiene: once defined by the removal of dirt or contagions by washing one’s hands, disinfectant sprays are now used to eliminate invisible germs from surfaces and environments. The object of cleanliness has shifted from the noticeable to that which lies unseen. As a result, urban dwellers are permanently anxious about hygiene and cleanliness. As frequent disinfection has become a part of everyday life in the metropolis, personal hygiene devices have begun to move out of the bathroom into public spaces, filling the city like the trees that line its streets.

Since ancient times, an abundance of storage amenities have been an indicator of power and privilege. In the same way that the elevated storage facilities of the Three Kingdoms Period served as strategic locations in the village to preserve food, we in our contemporary period have continued to work towards possessing extra resources. Such an obsession has created ever expanding storage spaces and surplus resources. The city calls for even more, seemingly endlessly, and its diminishing available space exacerbates such cravings. In the future, storage spaces must free themselves from living quarters, as the desire to store belongings manifests itself beyond the home to the city. Vacant spaces in the city are the easiest target for this desire, as, after all, storage is impartial to spatial form. Storage spaces will be first in line to occupy the vacant spaces of Seoul.

For the ancient Greeks, beds were central to social life and not restricted to places for sleep. As a place for dining, socialising and reading, the bed was not dedicated only to lengthier and better sleep. After 2000 years, the bed has taken on multiple roles within living spaces like the one-room apartments of Seoul. How will the bed evolve into a form that willingly engages with these additional roles, perhaps as occasional dining tables, studies or sofas for visitors?

The convenience of daily life in Seoul, where a meal from a restaurant half an hour away is swiftly delivered to one’s doorstep, challenges the hegemonic model of the domestic kitchen. The kitchen, once a focal point in any living space, has been relocated to the foyer. As a transitional space in which to prepare food deliveries, the foyer has been reassigned the role of kitchen or preparation space. The future corridor, armed with cooling appliances for collection and cooking appliances for rapid reheating, will become living proof of the efficient contemporary dining culture pursued by the city.

Modern flush toilets designed using a diverse range of materials have lost their aesthetic potential in favour of more metropolitan ways of thinking about efficiency. Situated in one metre square windowless water-closets, white porcelain toilets testify to this sacrifice to spatial demands. The toilet will henceforth be stripped of its surrounding cubicle walls to use space in a more efficient manner, and transformed and inserted into the walls as a built-in appliance. The toilets, placed like designed appliances in a living environment, will therefore regain greater aesthetic significance in the future.

The primitive hut – an architectural archetype – has long served as a shelter for physical protection from external threats. If, since ancient times, mounted structures have protected people from threats from the climate or predators, the metropolis demands exercise equipment to maintain high levels of personal health from lack of physical exertion in desk-bound jobs. Architecture faces the inevitable demand of developing exercise equipment for living spaces. Exercise equipment will potentially become one of the mainstay features of the contemporary home, acquiring the same status as partition walls or closets.

Living spaces in Seoul that have existed in a fixed spot closed off from surroundings can be liberated from a network of fixed coordinates through adopting the screen. Homes are no longer private spaces separate from the outside, with the increased use of the screen prompting a paradigm shift in the home. The urban resident’s perception of a home will migrate to that of an alternative coordinate system. In this somewhat distorted space, the homes of Seoul are twisted while simultaneously drawing close to and far away from each other.

The act of planting flowers and trees in a home reflects an unconscious struggle to bridge the gap between the domestic and the natural. Nevertheless, plants require regular attention and care. Plants, normally left to flourish alone, have long been deprived of their birthright as living entities in the living spaces of Seoul. Caring for plants is closer to an act of penance, for forcibly inserting nature into the city, than it is of human desire. Our affinity with nature is founded on an admiration of the vigour of flowers and trees, rather than for physical labour. People instinctively search for natural plant pots that require no extra work, enabled by recent advancements in technology. We will eventually possess potted plants that flourish entirely alone, with owners no longer responsible for providing adequate water or sunlight.