Why Technology Can’t Fix Bad Architecture Anymore: By Robert Douge, Co-Founder, Arya Douge

The “mod cons” that became universally available in the 1950s have been glorified ever since. The perceived correlation between gadgets and success gradually made homes more and more like the “machine for living in” imagined by Corbusier in the 1920s - almost to the point where the fabric of the house became more machine than mortar.

At the luxury end of the market, this accelerated dramatically. Entire basements became dedicated to plant rooms, cooling systems and audio-visual infrastructure. Homes increasingly relied on mechanical systems to heat, cool, illuminate and regulate every aspect of domestic life.

In many ways, it became a form of architectural “keeping up with the Joneses”. The more technologically advanced the house appeared, the more aspirational it became. But increasingly it seems we may have reached saturation point.

People already spend most of modern life in conditioned environments - offices, cars, gyms, restaurants and airplanes all calibrated to a carefully maintained average temperature. Illumination is everywhere too, increasingly designed to mimic daylight so convincingly that we barely notice the distinction anymore.

As a result, many people are beginning to want something different from their homes. Not more systems, but less dependence on them.

What makes this particularly interesting is that it sits against a broader shift in wellness culture.

For years, luxury was defined by the elimination of discomfort. Homes became increasingly capable of maintaining a perfectly calibrated internal environment regardless of what was happening outside. Temperature, lighting, humidity and air quality could all be controlled and optimised. Yet many of the fastest-growing wellness trends today seem to be seeking the opposite.

At the high end there is a growing fascination with experiences that expose us to real sensation again: heat through saunas, cold through ice baths, darkness through sound baths and natural light through infrared therapies. In many ways, people are actively seeking out the very conditions that modern life has spent decades engineering away.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that architecture is beginning to move in a similar direction.

I first noticed this shift in 2022 while designing a private house in Chelsea for an Australian client. The project involved an underpinned basement beneath the existing townhouse and, naturally, one of the proposed options included a swimming pool - something often still described as a “must-have” at a certain level of the market.

“No thanks,” was the client’s response. “I prefer swimming in the ocean or freshwater.”

I remember feeling oddly relieved by the answer.

Because increasingly, architects are having to confront an uncomfortable reality: technology has often been used to compensate for fundamentally inefficient design.

The architect no longer needs to think too carefully about whether a wall of floor-to-ceiling glazing facing south-west might overheat because somewhere in the basement sits a sufficiently powerful cooling system to solve the problem afterwards. A 10KW Daikin unit linked to a Building Management System can simply brute-force the room back to comfort.Ironically, the Building Management System itself often sits inside its own air-conditioned data cupboard because the equipment overheats if it becomes too warm.

For a long time, this approach felt acceptable because Britain’s climate remained relatively forgiving.

But rising temperatures are beginning to expose the flaws in that logic.

With increasingly frequent heatwaves, warmer summers and more volatile seasonal patterns - amplified further by El Niño weather cycles - overheating is becoming one of the defining architectural problems of contemporary housing in Britain. And many contemporary homes are not particularly well prepared for it.

Large expanses of glazing, fully sealed environments and open-plan layouts often perform beautifully in photographs but can become remarkably energy-intensive to cool. Increasingly, architects are having to think again about principles that earlier generations of designers simply could not ignore: orientation, shading, airflow and solar control.

There was a time before the “mod cons” when design decisions had real and irreversible consequences for how a house functioned. You could not simply correct a poorly orientated room with hidden technology afterwards. The building itself had to work harder. In many ways, that thinking is beginning to return.

At Arya Douge, we are increasingly interested in architecture that reduces dependence on mechanical correction rather than assuming it from the outset. Deep overhangs which shade glazing naturally. Operable windows that allow cross ventilation. Lower-ground spaces which utilise the stable temperature of the earth itself. Rooms which are positioned according to how the sun moves throughout the day.

Technology still absolutely has a role to play. Mechanical cooling is becoming increasingly necessary during periods of extreme heat, particularly in urban environments. But increasingly, the most intelligent homes are the ones where technology supports the architecture rather than compensating for it.

As temperatures continue to rise, the homes that perform best are unlikely to be the ones with the most systems hidden behind the walls.

They will probably be the ones where the architecture was working properly in the first place.