Post-pandemic Multifunctional Homes Gauri Gore, Project Head – Developer Spaces, Edifice Consultants Pvt Ltd shares her design approach for homes/apartments in the ‘New Normal’.

Real estate investing is existential. The uncertainty with the pandemic continues to keep us home bound mostly and the current trend seen is investing in buying homes, buying, or renting larger homes, etc. More homes are being bought in tier II cities because of the migration away from metro cities and changing work styles. Lasting hours at home and the new hybrid work strategies employed at offices – the work-from-anywhere concept demands comfortable homes over simple functional ones. With the pandemic keeping us home bound in many ways, home design needed reformation. Today, homes must accommodate different typologies of spaces within – commercial, recreational, institutional, etc., in addition to their conventional requirements. Flexibility is the approach to the new reformation. After the pandemic, the multifunctional role of a home has led to the concept of flexibility in residence design, resulting in establishment of spaces for daily needs such as a small office space, a grocery, a laundry, a day care, etc. The mixed-use typology will attract more focus than standalone residential complexes to operate independently and assure proximity. Design approach Multifunctional homes are homes/apartments that provide flexibility to inhabitants uncomplicatedly. The design approach revolves around enabling flexibility of multiple furniture layouts in the same space or transforming furniture pieces to allow for diverse functions in the same space. This may also constitute larger flexibility with movable partition walls between rooms that alters the areas of the spaces accordingly to the needs, usage, and function. The transformation includes options of 2 key homes that are modified to allow for 1-2 rooms to be accessed separately to function as office/studio spaces, etc. and further be merged with the house or rented separately. Another trend seen is the Jodi flats (as termed in some regions) that involves merging of two adjacent apartments to become one larger apartment.  In Jodi flats, the duplicated spaces such as kitchens are further transformed into multifunctional rooms, etc. Biophilia and access to open/semi open spaces is a default approach in the design of homes and other typologies as well. Through the pandemic, the demand for spaces such as balcony, terrace, bay window spaces has soared due to the indoor life. Interestingly, balconies and terraces have a multifunctional angle – they can transform into a garden, breakfast zone, yoga and meditation, workspaces and many more. Therefore, flexibility and multifunctional flexibility is key to creating office or home school spaces within homes without disrupting the regular functionality of a home. The Trend Even before the pandemic, the concept of multifunctional homes was witnessing a little trend. The developers were still gauging the market reaction to the new typology and were in their internal processes of providing customization to homeowners. However, after the pandemic, multifunctional homes are in demand and therefore newer launches will involve flexibility as part of the home layouts. There is variety that large residential complexes usually offer to buyers in terms of number of bedrooms, size of apartments, views, diverse layouts, etc. In this scenario, flexible homes or multifunctional homes can easily become a part of the market trend and cover a major percentage of the entire available apartments, also based on the location of the project. The home buying trend is influenced by the lower interest rates in home loans provided by banks, pushing the home buying decisions positively.