Reinventing the Family Home for the Boomerang Generation

As more and more young adults are moving back to their family houses, architects and designers are exploring ways to ease the transition. With the prototype project Home Back Home, Madrid's ENORME Studio is examining how this generational shift is reshaping contemporary ideas of the home.

In the third iteration of the Home Back Home project, ENORME created a room for Ana Mombiedro, a young woman returning to her family house to work on a PhD in neuroscience and architectural space. As is often the case when grown children move back, her bedroom was no longer available, leaving the designers to colonize a portion of the living room to create a combined bedroom and study. 

The latest iteration of the project, which was developed at the Instituto Do It Yourself in May and June of 2016, was sponsored by IKEA España's IKEALAB program. The architects took advantage of the brand's easily accessible pieces to build a platform that combines sleeping and study functions with a simple storage system for books or up to 40 pairs of shoes. 

To balance the needs of the home's new tenant with those of the existing family, ENORME focused on creating impermanent alterations that can simply be fabricated with readily available IKEA components. 

Home Back Home will be a part of After Belonging, the 2016 edition of the Oslo Architecture Triennale, which runs from September 8–November 27, 2016. 

How It Works

Cover photo by Javier de Paz García, estudioballoon.es.