We Buy a Home for the Person We Are
Today

When people buy an apartment, they almost always imagine their life as it is today.

Where the sofa will stand. Where the desk will go. What view they will see from the window in
the morning. Whether there will be enough storage. How convenient the journey to work will be
.
This is entirely natural. We choose a home according to our current habits, needs and way of life.

But there is one thing buyers rarely consider.

In twenty years’ time, there is a strong chance that an entirely different person will be living in
that apartment. Not a different owner. You yourself—simply changed by the years that have
passed.

Almost everything can change over twenty years.

Some people start a family. Some have children. Others begin working from home or launch
their own business. New interests appear, while the ways we travel, our habits and our daily
routines evolve.

Over time, people also begin to think differently about their health. What seemed insignificant at
thirty becomes part of everyday comfort at fifty. Air quality, silence, a stable indoor temperature,
the absence of damp and the opportunity to move more—all of these gradually stop feeling like
pleasant additions and become natural needs.

Life changes. The home remains the same.

A good residential development should therefore be designed not only for the moment of
purchase. It should be conceived for decades of a person’s life.

In my view, an architect’s task is not to predict what the life of a particular family will look like
in ten or twenty years. That is impossible.

What matters far more is creating a space that does not stand in the way of those changes.

When children arrive, the home should become more convenient, not more complicated. When
someone begins working remotely, the apartment should not feel as though it was designed
exclusively for evenings and weekends. When habits change, the development’s infrastructure
should support them rather than forcing residents to look for solutions elsewhere.
In other words, good architecture does not dictate a way of life. It gives people the freedom to
change it.

When a young family buys an apartment, a dedicated room for storing prams may not seem like
the most important feature of the development. A few years later, it begins saving them time
every single day.

A large storage room may initially be seen as a place for skis, suitcases or a bicycle. Later, it fills
with children’s belongings, sports equipment and seasonal items. Its contents change over time,
but the value of the space itself does not.

Underground parking with direct lift access may at first appear to be simply an element of
comfort. Years later, the ability to reach home without stairs, rain or summer heat begins to feel
entirely different.

A private, enclosed territory also reveals its value gradually. At first, it is simply a peaceful
courtyard. Later, it becomes a safe place where children can spend time independently.
Eventually, it becomes somewhere grandchildren come to visit.

Some engineering solutions also become more important with age. A young person rarely gives
much thought to ventilation quality, acoustic comfort or the heating system. Yet these are
precisely the things that gradually begin to determine how well we sleep, rest and recover every
day.

Other solutions begin to matter only when our way of life changes. Today you drive a car;
tomorrow you may switch to a bicycle; later you may buy an electric scooter or an electric
vehicle. A well-designed home should not turn these changes into a problem. A bicycle station,
charging points and the possibility of installing an electric-vehicle charger allow residents to
change their habits without having to change where they live.

Even shared spaces accompany people differently at different stages of life. Today you may
spend your mornings by the pool. A few years later, you may discover yoga. Later still, you may
meet neighbours more often over coffee or spend evenings with your family in the barbecue area
or on the open-air rooftop. These places do not impose a particular lifestyle. They create
possibilities for it.

While working on Zen Gardens, we discussed far more than apartment layouts or engineering
systems.

We kept returning to a different question.

How will someone live here in ten, twenty or thirty years?

Will the home still feel comfortable when their family changes?
When they discover new interests?
When the nature of their work evolves?
When their health begins to require more attention?

This is why many of the decisions behind the project may not seem especially noticeable during
a first visit to the development. Yet over time they begin to work together, creating an
environment that allows life to evolve naturally instead of forcing people to adapt to the
limitations of their home.

In my view, this is the true purpose of good architecture.

Not to impress people on the day they buy a home.

But to remain comfortable, functional and supportive long after their lives have changed many
times over.