Houses of tomorrow: A more hopeful vision of domesticity, or a dystopian nightmare?

So much for the home of 2021! What about the home of 2050? Might it offer a more hopeful vision of domesticity than the dystopian nightmare some of us have been living through these past couple of years? Or are we inexorably sliding into a world of surveillance and atomisation, climate crisis and housing crisis, drowning alone as our meta headsets suck the very data from our souls?

Perhaps digital wallpaper that changes colour depending on the emotions present in the home, like a screensaver but for a wall. It might beam in a live relay from a patch of rainforest that your household is sponsoring. Maybe it will respond to the presence of a baby or a pet.

And your mirror will become much fancier. It will provide morning affirmations, remind you to take your pills, help you apply your makeup and encourage children to brush their teeth with augmented-reality filters and animations. Probably.

Naturally, we will be recycling our waste and creating closed-loop energy systems to power our homes. Possibly we will be growing more of our own food, too: prickly pears and pomegranates ought to suit the British climate by then. And we might be doing more of this communally.