The first time I saw the RemoteHome project, I missed the most salient point:
The RemoteHome is a flat share that will exist in two distant cities at the same time: London and Berlin. Both spaces are electronically connected through the Internet, to turn furniture and architectural elements into tangible and sensual means of communication. Sensory and kinetic devices, as well as an interactive light installation allow for the exchange between this remotely living group of friends. A mobile wireless artefact, in the shape of a transforming interactive bag, can be taken on journeys to stay emotionally in touch with the RemoteHome. [emph. mine]
...it's all about sharing life in groups over distance. Unless I misunderstood and the apartments are single-occupancy, this project is one of the first attempts at technology-enhanced domestic spaces I've seen that responds to the conditions of unmarried life in urban centers. Roommates, longterm friendships, delayed marriage/childbirth -- it suddenly hits me that there's been little telepresence work involving the kind of sustained group relationships Ethan Watters described in Urban Tribes.
Now, it could be that there's little work because this just not a good idea, like the doomed voyeurism of We Live in Public. But I wonder if it isn't just that, at least in America, there hasn't been a lot of attention to paid domestic spaces that don't conform to the three- bedroom-and-two-car-garage model, or the gadget-filled Maxim-al flat.
I don't know if I would want to live with my friends in New York, even though I miss them terribly. Part of friendship is the careful maintenance of distance, after all. But I'm touched that the aether design group are trying to support the friendships of people like me -- or even people like themselves.
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