What happens to home when it becomes smart/er? What does “smartness” at home mean? What are the various consequences of home smartening? SMARTUP targets these questions as it explores how digitalisation affects our homes.

Home has long been positioned by means of particular dichotomies such as outside and inside, public and private, work and care, masculine and feminine, human and non-human. The digital transformation of home challenges these dichotomies as we could most recently witness in the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

SMARTUP investigates how the home has been transformed by digitalisation. How does going digital change what we understand and imagine as home? How does smartening up affect how homes are planned and designed as well as experienced on an everyday basis?

To explore these aspects of home digitalisation, SMARTUP brings together an interdisciplinary consortium from across Europe that includes experts from social sciences, design studies and (post)humanities. This variety will help the SMARTUP team to produce a unique, interdisciplinary perspective on what happens to home in(to) which digital technologies proliferate.

Start date: October 2022 - End date: October 2025

Partners

• Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Socioeconomics of Housing 

• Aalto University, Department of Design 

• University of Göttingen 

• University of Lodz, Department of Cultural Research & Women’s Studies Center

• Cardiff University, Welsh School of Architecture