What does the future in home living look like? A hot topic for design aficionados, visions of a dystopian life and stark functionality often immediately come to mind. Also, regularly asked is how we live today a reality to what our elders predicted? Attempting to provide the answers is an innovative exhibition at the Design Museum. Coming to a close later this month, Home Futures is an unmissable event for anyone intrigued by the journey of home design through time and the future.
In partnership with IKEA Museum Älmhult, the exhibition explores today’s vision of home and domesticity through the eyes of yesterday’s imagination. Comparing twentieth-century living prototypes with the latest inventions and conceptions, Home Futures ponders if yesterday’s fantasies eventuated to become today’s realities? Are we living how pioneering architects and designers once predicted, or, has our idea of the home prevailed resistant to real change?
A showcase of the design world’s biggest hitters, works from Ettore Sottsass, Hans Hollein, Archigram, Superstudio, Alison and Peter Smithson, Jan Kaplicky, Joe Colombo and Dunne & Raby take centre stage. More than 150 avant-garde contemplations, contemporary objects, never-seen-before commissions and experiences, to be exact.
Dimitri Bähler & Mathieu Rivier, Modularity is Interaction, 2015-18. Felix Speller for the Design Museum
Expect rare works including original footage from the General Motors Kitchen of Tomorrow (1956), original furniture from the Smithsons’ House of the Future (1956), Home Environment by Ettore Sottsass (1972) and an original model of Total Furnishing Unit by Joe Colombo (1972). All pieces have been curated to offer visitors a thought-provoking image of yesterday’s tomorrow.
The exhibition is integrated within a specially commissioned immersive environment by New York architect firm SO-IL and graphic designers John Morgan Studio. A translucent mesh delivers a series of dreamlike rooms and passageways, feeding guests sensory comfort whilst challenging the notion of privacy as they make their way through the exhibition.
Home Futures runs at the Design Museum until March to then journey to Sweden and the IKEA Museum in Älmhult.
Home Futures is exhibiting until 24th March 2019 at The Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London, W8
designmuseum.org
