The smart home: a visual analysis

Abstract

In this article, the authors engage with visual representations of smart homes, examining whether and how these media constitute emergent narratives of Western meanings of home. They do so by reporting on the findings of visual content and semiotic analysis of smart home images published in architectural media. They identify two modalities of smart home images published in these media – images in which smart home technologies are visible and those in which they are implicitly hidden. They read these images as constituting two semiotic myths of home: as familiar places of belonging for both people and smart objects, and as exceptional spaces of luxury associated with freedom from domestic labor delivered by smart technologies. They argue that these myths are central to securing social acceptance of the smart home by signifying it to be both trustworthy and aspirational.