SMARTUP: Smart(ening up the modern) home - Redesigning power dynamics through domestic space digitalisation

What happens to home when it becomes smart/er? What does “smartness” at home mean? What are the various consequences of home smartening? SMARTUP targets these questions as it explores how digitalisation affects our homes.

Home has long been positioned by means of particular dichotomies such as outside and inside, public and private, work and care, masculine and feminine, human and non-human. The digital transformation of home challenges these dichotomies as we could most recently witness in the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. SMARTUP investigates how the home has been transformed by digitalisation. How does going digital change what we understand and imagine as home? How does smartening up affect how homes are planned and designed as well as experienced on an everyday basis?

To explore these aspects of home digitalisation, SMARTUP brings together an interdisciplinary consortium from across Europe that includes experts from social sciences, design studies and (post)humanities. This variety will help the SMARTUP team to produce a unique, interdisciplinary perspective on what happens to home in(to) which digital technologies proliferate.

SMARTUP is not limited to expanding scholarly and lay understanding of “home” though. In collaboration with practitioners of smart home design & production, and civic and cultural institutions, SMARTUP also focuses on the impact of digital transformation on the home and its wider societal and cultural implications. In short, SMARTUP closes a gap in knowledge about the consequences of digitalisation in and of home by identifying societal and conceptual challenges posed by intensification of smartening up of home. At the same time, SMARTUP offers practical and theoretical ways to solve these challenges.

KEYWORDS:

smart homes, design practices, home-making, technology and gender, post-human theory, gendered division of labour, intersecting inequalities

CONSORTIUM

  • Project Leader: Petr Gibas, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Socioeconomics of Housing, Czechia, e-mail
  • Turkka Keinonen, Aalto University, Department of Design, Finland, e-mail
  • Julia Gruhlich, University of Göttingen, Germany, e-mail
  • Dorota Golanska, University of Lodz, Institute of Contemporary Culture, Department of Cultural Research & Women’s Studies Center, Poland
  • Clarice Bleil de Souza, Cardiff University, Welsh School of Architecture, United Kingdom, e-mail

COOPERATION PARTNERS

  • Julia Day, Washington State University
  • Liam O’Brien, Carleton University, Canada
  • Jarosław Suchan, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi (Art Museum in Lodz)
  • Blanka Nyklová, Centre for the Study of Popular Culture(CSPK), e-mail

EFFECTS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Project achievements:

Background / Context

Digital technologies are increasingly entering our homes. From smart thermostats and lighting systems to voice assistants and security cameras, “smart homes” promise comfort, efficiency, and energy savings. They are often presented as neutral tools that make everyday life easier.

But homes are not just technical spaces – they are social, emotional, and political spaces. They are places where care, work, safety, and power relations unfold. When digital technologies enter domestic space, they can reshape who does what, who controls what, and who benefits.

SMARTUP asked a simple but important question: How does the digitalisation of the home change power relations in everyday life?

This research is important because smart home technologies are rapidly expanding across Europe, yet their social consequences – especially regarding gender equality, care work, housing governance, and domestic safety – remain underexplored.

  1. Purpose and Objectives

SMARTUP investigated the transformation of domestic spaces through digitalisation across three interconnected dimensions:

1) Conceptualisation – How does digitalisation change the meaning and ideal of “home”? The project explored cultural imaginaries of smart homes in popular culture, art, and public discourse, including through the international panel “Living in the Smart Home: Redesigning Power Dynamics through Domestic Space Digitalization” at the SIEF Congress.

2) Production – How are smart homes designed and built? Who has power in these processes?

The project analysed decision-making and control in smart buildings. A key result was the article “OntoAgency: An Agency-based Ontology for Tracing Control, Ownership, and Decision-Making in Smart Buildings” (Building and Environment, 2024), introducing a new framework for understanding agency in digitalised housing.

3) Consumption – How do smart technologies reshape everyday life at home?

Research examined how convenience, control, gender roles, care work, and inequalities are reconfigured. A key publication, “Smart Home Technologies: Convenience and Control”, analysed the balance between comfort and power in domestic digital systems.

  1. Methodology

SMARTUP combined social science and humanities approaches. The team conducted over 40 in-depth ethnographic interviews with smart home residents, designers, and artists across several European countries. We observed everyday interactions with technologies, analysed popular culture representations, and developed conceptual models to map power dynamics in digital homes.

  1. Key Findings and Impact

SMARTUP shows that smart homes do not simply “automate” domestic life – they reorganise it.

Key findings include:

  • Smart technologies create new forms of invisible labour, such as “digital housekeeping” (managing devices, updates, data, troubleshooting).
  • Digital systems can reproduce or reshape gender inequalities in domestic work and care.
  • Smart surveillance technologies may introduce new risks, including forms of technology-facilitated control.
  • Decision-making power in smart housing is distributed among residents, landlords, technology providers, and policymakers.

By making these dynamics visible, SMARTUP supports:

  • More inclusive and gender-sensitive smart home design
  • Safer digital domestic environments
  • More transparent housing governance in the energy transition
  • Greater public awareness of the social implications of digitalisation

The project produced 14 academic articles (7 published, 5 under review, 2 drafted), 4 book chapters,  a PhD dissertation, 10 open-access Factsheets, a public video, numerous public lectures and podcasts,  and a forthcoming edited volume

Publications:

  • Gruhlich J., Golanska D., Bleil De Souza C., Nyklová B., Ehrenberg N., Hamarowski B., Frydrysiak S., Badyina A., SmartUp Project: Preliminary lessons and provocations for design, operation and policy making of smart homes, EU BUILD UP – The European Portal for energy efficiency and renewable energy in buildings, 2023, https://build-up.ec.europa.eu/en/resources-and-tools/articles/smartup-project-preliminary-lessons-and-provocations-design-operation
  • Ehrenberg N., Smart Home Technologies: Convenience and Control; Humane Autonomous Technology, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024
  • Ehrenberg N., Harviainen J.T., Suominen J., Towards Panopticons of Convenience: Power in the Nordic Smart Home Assemblage, Proceedings of the 26th International Academic Mindtrek Conference, New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1145/3616961.3616962
  • Ehrenberg N., Panopticons of Convenience – The Internal Politics of the Smart Home, Doctoral Theses, Aalto University; Helsinki, 2023, https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-64-1263-4
  • Bleil De Souza C., Badyina A., Golubchikov O., OntoAgency: An agency-based ontology for tracing control, ownership and decision-making in smart buildings, Building and Environment, 2024, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132324003317?via%3Dihub
  • Bleil De Souza C., Golubchikov O., Badyina A., OntoAgency 2.0, Zenodo, 2023, https://zenodo.org/records/10711322
  • Gruhlich, J., Kubala, P., Fárová, N., Frydrysiak, S., Is Digital Housekeeping Care? Visions, Legitimations and Negotiations of Care Work in the Smart Home, Berliner Journal für Soziologie, vol. 35, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-025-00575-2
  • Ehrenberg, N., Pirinen, A., Mäkinen, R., Sharing Space, Time, and Technology: The Lived Experience of Smart Home Technologies in Cohousing, Housing Studies, vol. 41, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2025.2454544
  • Golańska, D., Hamarowski, B., A Wicked Vestal: Subverting the Androcentric Imaginaries of the Smart Home, Australian Feminist Studies, 38, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2024.2371156
  • Gruhlich, J., Fárová, N., Nyklová, B., Hamarowski, B., Frydrysiak, S., Decoding Gender in Smart Home Research: A Critical Literature Review, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, vol. 41, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-026-10273-x
  • Bleil De Souza, C., Golubchikov, O., Badyina, A., Humanising Smart Homes: For Lived Praxis in the Digital Age, Progress in Human Geography, 2025
  • Ehrenberg, N., Pirinen, A., Mäkinen, R., Harviainen, J. T., Property Technologies Re-shaping the Power Relations in Rental Housing, The Geographical Journal, 2025
  • Ehrenberg, N., Pirinen, A., Mäkinen, R., Living with and Living for: Examining Visions of Digital Technologies in Nordic Co-Living, Housing Studies, 2025
  • Bleil De Souza, C., Golubchikov, O., Badyina, A., Frisch, J., Shamovic, M., Lorenz, C., Building-as-a-Service: How Does It Look Like in Practice?, Applied Energy, 2025
  • Bleil De Souza, C., Ehrenberg, N., Pirinen, A., Golubchikov, O., Badyina, A., Living-as-a-Service: Co-living Spaces, Digitalisation, and the Residualisation of Dwelling, 2025
  • Bleil De Souza, C., Golubchikov, O., Badyina, A., Perisouglou, E., Patterson, J., How Smart Does Energy Retrofit Need to Be?, 2025
  • Pirinen, A., Käytön Optimointi ja Tehostaminen: Korkea Käyttöaste, Tilat Palveluna, Yhteiskäytöt, Jakaminen ja Väliaikaiskäytöt Korostuvat, in: Ilmiöverkosto: Kiinteistö- ja rakentamisalan kehityksen suunnat, 2026
  • Bleil De Souza, C., Pezzica, C., Hahn, J., Using Bottom-Up Digital Technologies in Technical Decision-Making for Designing a Low-Carbon Built Environment, in: Smart Cities, Energy and Climate: Governing Cities to a Low-Carbon Future, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118641156.ch20
  • Golubchikov, O., Yenneti, K., Introduction: Cities in the Twin Net-Zero and Digital Transition, in: Smart Cities, Energy and Climate: Governing Cities to a Low-Carbon Future, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118641156.ch1
  • Gibas, P., Gruhlich, J., Golańska, D., Bleil De Souza, C., Kubala, P., Fárová, N., Ehrenberg, N., Pirinen, A., Hamarowski, B., Frydrysiak, S., Golubchikov, O., Badyina, A., Smart Home: From Cultural Imaginaries to Lived Experiences, 2025

 Start date

1 October 2022

Project duration

36 months

 Project budget

€ 1 484 848

Funding organisations