Imagine that you re visiting an open house 30 years in the future. Solar panels hug the roof and a wind turbine spins wildly in the stiff spring breeze. It s raining heavily, yet there are no puddles underfoot. The rain is soaking into the pavement.

Snaking down the sides of the house are large downspouts that disappear into the ground and into what appear to be cisterns. Your ears catch the faint sound of voices and town activity coming from the back of the house, which, you are told, is actually the front.

This house seems backward with all its features from the past: cisterns, home gardens, delivery services, community green. As internationally recognized designer and engineer Chris Luebkeman said, things we once knew will come back again.

For decades we built houses how and where we wished, concerned only about comfort and style, with little thought to any long-term consequences. But the prospect of a planet with a changed climate is creating a different world.

This will be especially apparent in our housing. Buildings account for nearly half of the nation s yearly greenhouse gas emissions, says architect Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, an organization for protecting the global environment. It can no longer be business as usual.

We ve been using the atmosphere as a convenient sewer for 200 years, said meteorologist Paul Douglas of our greenhouse-gas emissions. Now it s coming back to bite.

To slow global warming, cope with climate change and avert disaster, experts say, buildings will have to change. It ll amount to a revolution in housing.

Minnesota might need to lead the way. Situated in the middle of the continent, on the nation s rooftop, the state is in the cross hairs of climate change, according to Peter Ciborowski, an analyst who studies climate change for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

We will see more weather changes than will other parts of the country, because global warming affects northern latitudes most, scientists say. In addition, we have been more prone to the leading edge of arctic air masses, Ciborowski said. Getting fewer of those makes a huge difference.

Precisely what kind of climate changes will occur, and when, is difficult to predict, but scientists are beginning to recognize trends. Minnesota will be warmer and probably wetter overall, but precipitation is likely to come in prodigious amounts interspersed with dry spells, even droughts. Winter will be warmer and shorter with more sleet. Snow will melt days after it falls.

We ll no longer hold a season-long snow pack, Ciborowski predicts.

Expect longer, muggier summers with more hail and an increasing likelihood of extreme weather. That includes tornadoes, Douglas said.

But expect surprises, Ciborowski said. It s important to remember that global warming and climate change are not necessarily steady, predictable processes.

Neither is the shift to more sustainable housing. Development patterns will change. The days of building large homes on vast acreage will vanish. We ll be living in smaller homes, closer together or even attached, and clustered within green areas. These homes will sprout first where there is open land to develop, but the changes eventually will come even to established city neighborhoods as some roadways are abandoned and turned into green or garden areas.

Minnesota s house of the future will have zero carbon emissions, meaning it will need no fossil fuels. The house will also be disaster-resilient, capable of withstanding capricious forces in an unknown weather world. Insurers and governments paying for disaster damage will demand no less. Needless to say, the house also will be filled with technological wonders.

Interiors of the future

By design, daylight will flood the home, reducing the need for lighting. Window glass will be switchable, with electrochromic glazing automatically lightening or darkening to control heat gain. In the kitchen, OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) will illuminate work areas. There will be no old-fashioned light switches and no appliances will be visible. The highly efficient, computer-networked appliances will be integrated into a glass-paneled wall.

The technology-packed kitchen, indeed the whole house, will be powered by solar or wind power, gathered either by the house or a community array, with a utility grid as backup. This way, the house operates off the grid and the meter runs backward. When there s neither wind nor solar power, the home taps the utility grid.