THE BIGGEST problem facing retirement home developers is the image that such accommodation conjures up: “Waiting for God”, as the television sitcom so tactfully puts it

For most of us, when we are 17 life is eternal At 70 we still like to hope it is. It is then mixed with rain water, recycled, pumped back and used to flush toilets, water the plants and clean the car.The low running costs of the small, smart house are making the providers of social housing sit up and take notice. Waste water from baths, basins, sinks and the washing machine is filtered and flows off into a pond into which the rest of the estate feeds. The worlds of work and home are becoming less defined and houses should reflect that. We want to establish a better designed, more efficiently built product, which the consumer may customise and adapt; which is easier to maintain, cheaper to run and easier to control.”The saving of water plays an essential role in the Integer house. Ventilation of the box comes from the tempered zone which, with its filtrating plants, provides a cleaner and more healthy environment.”Buying a house should be more like buying a car – you opt for the features you want, with back-up maintenance through a sort of AA man for the home,” says Mr Thompson “The Integer house provides this flexibility.

It can be used as living accommodation for nine months of the year or as an indoor garden. It will have solar panels and photovoltaic cells for generating electricity, and part of the roof may even be sown with pampas grass. The service core may be prefabricated with the controlled conditions of a factory and delivered to the site. The accommodation is an open-plan space that can be divided up by removable partitions to suit the occupants’ needs.

Rooms will probably have underfloor heating since wall-fixed systems would not suit flexible room partitioning.Acting as a shell around the box is an insulated glass case, a variation on the conservatory, creating a “tempered” climate: cool in the summer, warm in the winter. “The central computer enables people to get on with their lives.”At the centre of the prototype two-storey house is a super-insulated “box” containing the service core – kitchen and bathroom – and accommodation core – bedrooms and living quarters. “We are bringing together research and development from appliance manufacturers, utilities, telecoms, television and cable companies,” says Integer’s Nicholas Thompson. The group, which was set up only last year, and the model it has just created have already attracted widespread interest among building societies and MPs.Every house has electronic appliances with microchips – heating systems, burglar alarms, televisions, hi-fis, videos; but they do not communicate with each other. What the intelligent home does is to co-ordinate the devices to save energy and time. It’ll pay the gas, telephone and electricity bills by remote metering. With the help of a sensor beam or pressure pad, it will even switch on the landing light as you go to the loo in the middle of the night.This, many believe, is the house of the future.