Dutch property portal funda has used big data collected from its website and employed architects to interpret the information to design a dream home for users.
The real estate portal claims to attract more than 4.3 million unique visitors a month and 1 billion house views per year.The portal has intepreted this data and broken it down into three categories to create The funda house; a place where dreams, wishes and reality are combined.
Dream/Wish/Reality
Jurriaan van Gent, one of the analysts working on the funda house project, said space was a key factor in designing the perfect home for users.
“People searching for houses on funda are clearly looking for larger houses than they can really afford,” van Gent said. “We thought it would be interesting to take this a step further: would it be possible to combine dreams with reality?”
An interpretation of the data
Architects involved in the funda house design project were Jeroen Atteveld (Heren 5 architects) and Dingeman Deijs (Dingeman Deijs Architects).
“We think that a feeling of ‘spaciousness’ is incredibly important,” Deijs said. “That feeling can be created by other factors than simply square meter plot size or living area, such as, for example, the ways in which you can look and move through a home, the views and amount of natural light. That’s why we took the spacial qualities of a castle as a starting point, and applied them to a terraced house.”
The re-invention of the terraced house
The funda house is designed to be a recognisable terraced house, with three floors, pointed roof and dormer, but on the other, it differs in a number of ways. It has an open landing and the stairs meander through the house, connecting all the rooms with one another.
In this way, natural light is able to enter the house from all angles, and exciting views are created between the rooms, which creates a spacious and well-lit home. The funda House’s appearance is also different to what one might usually expect. The facade is more closed, giving a greater sense of privacy, which contrasts with the back of the funda House, which has double doors opening into the back garden.
A terraced castle
The thick walls, which are so characteristic of a castle, are applied in the funda House in order to create space for the kitchen, cabinet space, bathroom and bedrooms. The royal-sized living space is two stories high and 145m3, giving it the spacious feel so many people are looking for. The other rooms, such as the bedrooms, are smaller than they are in normal terraced houses. They retain their function in the funda House, but have a smaller setup, and each have a different special characteristic, such as the box-bed, the tower room and the walk-in bath.
Jeroen Atteveld says big data will become more instrumental in shaping the housing needs of funda customers.
“Especially now the real estate market in the Netherlands is picking up again and houses are being sold at a faster rate, it is important to continue to listen to the housing needs of the Dutch people and create innovative homes,” Atteveld said. “The purpose of the funda House is to start a discussion about how Dutch people want to live and what the role of big data could be.”
