The Brass Tacks of Architecture in 2024

Sustainability, Biophilic Design, and Multifunctional Space: The Architectural Trends of 2024

As architects move into a new and improved era of design, their focus has shifted toward sustainability, green spaces, and a more flexible way of living. This year, we’re exploring the architectural trends of 2024, including what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s on the minds of architects and homeowners across the country and across the East End. 

Over the course of the past few years, sustainability has become increasingly important to homeowners when is has come to home design. Architects have also been taking steps to ensure that their work is carbon-neutral, eliminating greenhouse gases in their building and seeking to contribute less to factors associated with climate change. One way to do this has been through the incorporation of eco-friendly materials into home design. Expect to see even more reclaimed wood, recycled steel, bamboo, and even recycled plastic as substitutes for traditional hardwoods, which can result in deforestation and other wide-scale carbon-emitting events. 

Tied into this trend is vintage design. Vintage — or salvaged — tile, countertops, and even pieces of older homes rescued from estate sales are showing up in new builds, as consumers become more conscious about consumption and about their role in creating new paths toward building and toward creating. Architects, too, have become savvy marketers of the restoration of older goods, and this trend is only growing with a younger market of buyers. 

Other sustainability initiatives in home design include an increased reliance on smart technologies, which not only improve a home’s wow factor, but also can enhance energy efficiency and functionality. Homes with smart capability can adapt to a homeowner’s needs, using less energy during times when no one is home, and conserving valuable resources. Smart technology can also be used to reduce waste in a refrigerator, to assist in cooking (saving valuable energy there, too), and even as a home alert system, saving a homeowner money, time, and resources. 

Biophilic design — the idea of connecting people to nature in architecture — has risen in popularity this year. Living walls, potted plants, and earth-based materials are capturing the hearts and minds of homeowners and architects alike. Bringing a little of nature inside is a great way to promote sustainability, and it has reinforced the design trend of the past few years: neutral spaces that draw the eye toward the surroundings, as opposed to maximalist indoor spaces. 

Beginning during the pandemic, flexible design remains a central and popular theme among architects and homeowners alike. Singularly dedicated spaces — an office that is only an office, for instance, or a media room that is only a media room — are no longer as popular as they were five or 10 years ago. Designers now seek to make rooms as purposeful as possible, full of possibility. Homeowners may need to change the use of a room down the line, may decide they want to use a space differently, or may want to use a room for more than one purpose in a designated period of time, and so flexible use spaces are becoming increasingly popular in the design and execution of homes.