Luxury home mainstays that are dying out

Picture: Supplied

Picture: Supplied

Published Jan 29, 2017

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Some real estate amenities are eternal—a sweeping view

across Central Park, for instance, or a doorman who knows your favourite

driver. Others, though, might prove unexpectedly faddish: What seems like a

must-have today could vanish in the developments of tomorrow. Here are four

surprising staples of the luxury real estate market that insider experts

predict could soon become obsolete.

The home theater

The home theatre market stateside stood at $1.4 billion

in 2015, up more than 50 percent since the same period in 2010, per Cedia, a

trade association for home technology companies. Of course, it’s no longer

enough to install a supersize screen and digital projector: True cinephiles can

build their own $1 million personal Imax theatre and sign up for Prima Cinema,

a Netflix-like service for the 1 percent that allows rentals of

first-run movies at $500 a pop.  

It could prove to a short-sighted investment, though, at

least according to architect Duan Tran of KAA Design. “Our clients are

requesting fully immersive, VR environments because they’re super-busy and want

the highest forms of escapism,” Tran confides by phone from his office in Los

Angeles.

One current project, commissioned by a man the architect

calls “a real techie, who likes to geek out,” involved simply stripping down

the erstwhile maid’s room in his home, turning it into a 20-foot-by-20-foot

shell as the venue for his own personal Holodeck. “There, he can throw on

a pair of VR goggles and immerse himself completely. Imagine taking a walk on

the beach in the Bahamas, or a walk down to the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday

afternoon before dinner.”

Tech advances have propelled this blue-sky idea into brick-and-mortar

reality, such as the relatively affordable VR cubes and screens from such

companies as Virtalis. Tran explains that changing building codes in

overbuilt areas such as L.A. could also have an effect moving this

forward. “They’re starting to restrict the size of houses, so when clients

request bells and whistles—a 20-car garage, say—we need to be more efficient

with space,” he says. “Right now, you might need to have 1,000 square feet

dedicated to a home theater," but in the future, "it could be a

6-foot-by-6-foot room for the same programming.”

The master suite

Sprawling master suites were once the ultimate trophy

asset in a luxury home, but recent developments have begun replacing the

open-plan, loft-like rooms with a complex of private chambers, jigsawed

together around a smaller, cozy space that’s home solely to a bed. Douglas

Elliman’s Roy Kim points to Miami’s Rem Koolhas-designed Park Grove as an

example. “You’ll see an antechamber, like a study, or a library, plus a large

dressing area and a spa-like bathroom,” Kim says by phone from California. “You

no longer want to walk unceremoniously into a master bedroom and see the

bed—creating privacy is more important than ever.”

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Jonah Disend, founder of innovation firm Redscout,

explains further: “The concept of a master bedroom is becoming obsolete because

we have a different relationship with sleep now—we don’t hang out in the

bedroom the way we used to.” Disend notes that millennials are driving this

shift. Their relationship with privacy is radically different from those of the

generations preceding them—though digitally nonchalant, they’re prudish in

person.

“Millennials don’t like to get naked—if you go to the gym

now, everyone under 30 will put their underwear on under the towel, which is a

massive cultural shift,” he continues. As gym designers are adapting, so are

condo developers. “They want their own changing rooms and bathrooms, even in a

couple.”

The same instinct is driving the renewed boom in

so-called accessory apartments, typically a second, studio home purchased

by wealthy couples in the same luxury development where they live, so that

boomeranging 20-somethings can enjoy full privacy when moving back in with mom

and dad.

Even when they live with peers, these new privacy

preferences are changing the layout of apartments, according to Teresa Ruiz of

SB Architects. “We’re seeing a shift in household formation, with a lot of

co-habitation by renters,” she says by phone from her office in San Francisco.

For one local developer, Avalon, Ruiz says the average age of a renter is

30 years old, with an average income of $300 000. “The private space they want

may be smaller, but they want a larger unit as a whole, so we’re making two

bedrooms with a den and an extra bathroom.” Translation: They’ll share a sofa

but are squeamish if ever asked to split the sink.

The garage

According to the number-crunchers at McKinsey,

ride-sharing and driverless cars will reduce the space allocated to parking

vehicles by 25 percent come 2050, a reduction that represents more than 61

billion square feet of extra living room. And we’re already seeing

buildings that anticipate this shift, says Joel Dixon of real estate

startup Compass. For example, floor-to-ceiling heights in garages are

increasing, to make it easier to convert parking spots to office or

residential use at a later time. Likewise, footprints are shrinking so that

every corner receives natural light—again, essential for adaptive

reuse. Elsewhere, future-proofed buildings with flexible spaces that allow

garages to be repurposed are already appearing. 

“Parking floors aren’t angled with ramps as they used to

be, either,” Joel adds, by phone from his office in New York. “Instead, they

use speed bumps to slow traffic, which is also much easier to adapt for future

reuse.”

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LA was a pioneer of this shift, thanks to the Adaptive

Reuse Ordinance of the 1990s. To encourage development of vacant commercial

buildings into housing, these rules exempted buildings from onerous minimum

parking requirements—and so prepped the luxury homes within for the

shared-ride boom. In Miami, Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road fuses

residential, office, retail, and parking in a single structure, the idea being

that as zoning requirements evolve, autonomous vehicle use increases, and behaviour

patterns shift, the building would be able to react. Likewise, at

Government Center in Boston, a 2,130-vehicle parking garage will be replaced by

two 500-foot luxury towers—with only 600 spaces open to the public.

Of course, as garages shrink, one related amenity is

expanding: With more vehicles lining up to wait or drop residents at home, a

lavish driveway is more essential than ever.

The showcase kitchen

According to Redscout’s Disend, elaborate, centerpiece

kitchens, like master suites, are another amenity on the endangered list in

high-end homes. In part, it’s because delivery services such as Blue

Apron or Amazon Prime Now will minimize the need to store anything but the bare

minimum at home, coupled with such new amenities as centralized cooking

and catering within a development. Take Rafael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue,

where Michelin-starred chef Shaun Hergatt will operate a residents-only

restaurant, providing the ultimate in luxury takeout.

Disend also identifies the rise of 3D printing as fundamental

to this change. “Soon—I’d expect [in] around two or three years' time—you will

be able to create specific housewares for a dinner party when you throw it,” he

says, minimizing the need for storage; Disend himself has even invested

directly in 3D printing startup Othr for exactly these reasons. If 3D

printers for food ever pass the gimmick phase, future homeowners may be able to

dispense with the cooking entirely.

And where would you put that printer? Well,

an "appliance garage," which Elliman’s Kim predicts will replace

the open-plan showcase kitchen. “We’re recommending appliance garages in our

upcoming projects, a place to put your espresso maker, juicer, and anything

that might clutter the countertop or cause smells, a bit like a mini version of

the chef’s kitchen.”

BLOOMBERG

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