What does a house derived from the collective preferences of 2 million Swedes look like? The Hemnet Home, aka “The House of Clicks,” is an experiment in big data architecture, designed based on web traffic on a popular real estate portal. An analysis of 200 million clicks on 86,000 properties over a 10-month period surfaced the most desirable features and finishes on the quintessential Swedish dream home.
Survey says: Swedes like open plan kitchens, fireplaces, plain white walls, wood parquet flooring, granite countertops, and gray couches.
Dubbed the most “statistically desirable house in Sweden,” the findings were translated by architects Tham & Videgård Arkitekter into a boxy 1,115 sq. ft (120 sq. meter) multi-level, 3-bedroom structure with a rather stark façade reminiscent of a modern shipping container home, despite the layer of the signature Swedish Falu Red paint. “We wanted to unite the data from Hemnet with two iconic Swedish house types, each with its own distinct style: the rationalism of a functionalist box and the craftsmanship of a red wooden cottage,” explained architect Bolle Tham.
Perhaps inevitably, the house’s interiors look like scenes from an IKEA catalog. They were determined by analyzing the images of the most-clicked properties over a six-week period.
The project raises questions not only about the future shape of buildings but also the role of architects in a crowd-sourced designed future. Traditionally considered as visionary authors, will the architects of tomorrow be more like interpreters, mediators, and translators to accommodate the input from legions of anonymous contributors?
The House of Clicks is being primed for mass production and projected to be on the market by 2016. With the price for the units determined based on the data from the web traffic, sales will prove if the theoretically most sought-after house in all of Sweden will live up to its claim.
