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We hear the word ‘trend’ all the time: musical trends, fashion trends, design trends. We are always looking for new trends, we try to guess the colour of the year, we want to be the first to find out which will be the trendiest animal of the next 10 years.

There’s no prize for this, only the chance to say ‘I told you’.

But what is a trend, really?

Dictionary in hand, in statistics, referring to demographic phenomena, a trend is any long-term development. […] Broadly speaking, a trend is any development, orientation pertaining facts and phenomena that aren’t strictly of an economic nature.

Concrete and leather, Biscay Bay, Black Lines are micro-trends, or we may call them style trends: they tell us about current tastes, favourite colours, the materials that represent us and fascinate us the most. But they don’t tell much about us.

An interesting trend is one that tells us something about how people live, about their needs and their lifestyles.

I pinned down three trends that I believe should be taken into account today when designing the houses of tomorrow.

1. Everything around me

Sedia sospesa in rattan o vimini

A house is built for those living in it. Period. This trend doesn’t need any explanation. There’s the person, their needs, and nothing else. We aren’t willing to live uncomfortably anymore, we aren’t willing to give up what we truly love. Interior design needs to listen to man’s needs and provide for their care.

2. With no fixed abode

A steady job, always the same city to live in: young people today don’t look for this anymore. Or at least most of them don’t. We are used to small houses, to working on the same table where we eat lunch. We can send emails from bars, design houses from cafes. Give us WiFi and we’ll change the world. Maybe.

3. Silence

We are constantly connected to the rest of the world. We live our real life and our virtual life at the same time. We don’t have working hours. This is all wonderful, but sometimes we need to stop. Somewhere in our home there needs to be a nest, a place where we can leave all the rest outside. We need silence, we need emptiness, we need a lack of information.

This blog post is a part of Design Blogger Competition organized by CGTrader