Exposed utilities just makes sense. Who wants to tear open walls or work in crawl spaces just run the damn pipe outside the walls. Who wants to wait until a slow leak works its to a visible area. Putting utilities in the wall will be seen as peak lead brain design in any future I want to live in.
When I was house shopping our realtor kept showing us finished basements, but all I wanted was an unfinished basement because it’s so much easier to access the utilities.
My dream is to renovate my house and run pvc pipes through the walls to every room, so that as standards change I can just snake new types of wires down to my basement.
As a habitual fun-ruiner, I feel compelled to point out that the Audi from I, Robot just has omniwheels—it doesn't hover.