When homes become data: ethical and legal dimensions of the aesthetics of living

Abstract

This paper will investigate how homes emerge both as a legal construct and an aesthetic environment, whereby architecture and interior design translate human identity into data-driven environments in a time when housing is increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence and sensor technologies; it explores the ethical and legal dimensions of the datafication of domestic life in the European Union, focusing on the GDPR, AI Act, and related design norms, shaping accountability, transparency, and privacy by design through which personal identity materializes. Building on previous research in data protection, human focussed design, smart living, and environmental psychology, this study places the home as a space where aesthetic intention and personal data converge. An interdisciplinary approach involving the blend between doctrinal analysis of EU data protection law and insights from contemporary design practice, one finds that personalized, AI-assisted environments often process special category data: health indications, emotional preferences, cultural, religious, and lifestyle references, transforming homes into a non-verbal portrait of its inhabitants, encoding individual subjectivity into the material and spatial form of the home. Results show that aesthetic personalization, sustainability, legal compliance, and emotional resonance are related to each other in a complex interaction in which design serves as a psychological vessel that reflects values, cognitive styles, and lifestyle aspirations. The intersection underlines creative freedom, which is given to a tension between data ethics and lawful processing, with particular emphasis on the architecture for preferences, and self-perception. From these, several implications result, especially for the key role of personal data in constructing smart living as an ethical and affective ecosystem in which architecture and design lead to self-determination and collective well-being. The value of the paper lies in its integration of data protection law, AI ethics, and design aesthetics into a unitary conceptual framework, redefining the smart home as a data protection, emotionally intelligent, human-focused space.