Home lift company Aritco was founded by four entrepreneurs outside of Stockholm in 1995. Since then, it’s developed to become one of the global leaders within the platform lift category, for both homes as well as public and commercial spaces, and also collaborating with leading designers. Today they produce almost 4,000 lifts per year, working both as a premium addition in some houses as well as giving accessibility for those who are in need, sold in 40 different countries across the globe.
The company just launched its Future of the home report, together with British intelligence network Springwise. It’s an outlook on how they look at the development and trends in the homes post-pandemic, within the areas of health, safety, and comfort. It’s also about understanding the ecosystem that the home has become when we are putting new demands on it, fitting into being an area for both homes, workspaces, and recreation at the same time.
— As a producer of a product that we foresee is an important part of the structures of people living together in different ways, we need to understand how our innovations and development in the future must be developed to always be relevant for the users, says David Schill, Marketing Manager. Likewise of course it is important for us to do this understanding in the context of others and their views on future development, in order to make sure that we not only see this from our point of view but also understand the pain points within other areas to create the multi-lens glasses we all need to ensure that we understand the world around us. Our findings and knowledge are important to share and likewise, we look for other companies who are open to sharing their findings. It is only when we discuss, for instance through our broadcasted panel discussions, that we can jointly try the new findings and calibrate them.
What kind of innovations would you say are the most important to drive change in your industry?
— Here is probably no surprise for anyone, but digitalization is the absolute biggest one. Last week, I listened to a presentation by the bank Credit Suisse, and their Analytics for the lift industry, and the presentation had the headline Digitalize or Die. I truly believe the digitalization in all different ways; connection, interaction, and design will truly enable us to ensure optimized and individual user experience in the close coming future, says Schill.
— Digitalization is the foremost change that will enable us to combine our homes to become both a place to live, work and spend recreation time in. My home is foremost a place that I want to live in, therefore I don’t want to re-design it to become a full office. Most people don’t have the luxury to have an extra room or space that they can dedicate only for office purposes. The digital tools combined with multipurpose furniture that’s visually engaging with top-notch functions together create an easy and office-like working environment. But the digitalization is also a risk of segregation, which is an important watch out for us all on how to make sure that these new tools are inclusive and easy to join. Digitalization takes us to the next step in health and socializing. Monitoring our health in different ways to ensure that even if changes around in the world creates anxiety and we can’t meet, we’ll find tools and help to monitor and support everything from sleep to a healthy lifestyle. Hospitals and doctors can also monitor our health issues remotely still being at home. Socializing is one of the big issues during the pandemic, but even here we can see that digitalization supports new ways of meeting, travelling in a group to Iceland, visiting sites, and be guided on a tour is not a problem from your home anymore. Several new companies offer virtual travelling to different places all around the world without having to actually leave your home.
According to the report, how will our homes change in the future?
— There are a lot of new ways to handle and overcome issues that we are fronted by. However, we see that the basic need of meeting each other is such a rooted need in us that this is the key driver for how we will live in the future. We are all longing to engage with friends and family and not being able to, is what is hurting us most. So, functionality that will support doing this in a risk-free, easy, and enjoyable way is key for us in the future. It will probably drive things such as multigenerational living, living in smaller communities, sharing rooftop gardens, but also ensuring when doing that, we can facilitate that in a safe way. Using tech for neutralization of bacteria and viruses and using transportation that is personalized for our share needs are key things when we grow our cities. Because all of us can’t and don’t want to either live on a piece of land that we own ourselves and in a household that is self-sufficient on food and energy or a villa in the suburbs with multiple cars and juggling act between workload and family needs. In the future we need to facilitate a sustainable and safe way of living, living close to each other in the future cities.
The full report is available here.
