Home Futures
Researching for the previous blog post, Trends Throughout the Years, reminded me of an exhibition I visited at the Design Museum a couple of years ago. Named “Home Futures”, it was an exploration of what today’s home might be like, through the eyes of 20th century designers. Some ideas were futuristic and fantastical; others spot on…
The exhibition focused on five themes: Living with Others, Living with Less, Living on the Move, Living Smart and Living Autonomously.
Living with Others
“TECHNOLOGY IS THE CAMPFIRE AROUND WHICH WE TELL OUR STORIES”
Living with Others considered living together in enhanced environments – the increasing Internet of Things, the prevalence of screens, the rise of smart speakers, the related data that is captured and the inevitable anxieties that stem from the above.
The poster below, by Luke Sturgeon, forms part of a broader project (together with a short film and 24-hour immersive experience) which examines the city and data. In his imagined future, all data is nationalised and the government uses it to allocate living space – yikes.
The exhibit also features an ‘Electro-Draught Excluder’ – an object thought up by Dunne and Rigby to deflect and protect against the electromagnetic fields radiating from electronic appliances.
Living with Less
“LESS IS ENOUGH”
Living with Less looked at space in the context of growing urban populations. In the 1920s, a functional approach to the home began to take hold and the optimisation of domestic life became a scientific study. Indeed, measurements of the body and its movement were examined. As part of this, there was a rise in hybrid furniture – with the aim of minimising space and maximising functionality.
Here, the work of Enst Neufert is seminal – his handbook contains diagrams and measurements of objects like baths, sinks and cabinets and states their optimal spatial requirements.
What’s more, the exhibition includes the work of Andrea Zittel and her Dynamic Essay About the Panel (2014). The panel “can be used as a curtain, a carpet, a roof, a room-divider, a table or a bed’ and is central to how we order and inhabit living spaces.
One might argue that Gary Chang’s ‘Transformer Apartment’, also featured, is centred upon the panel. Through sliding walls, the 344 square feet space in Hong Kong can be transformed into 24 different layouts, including a walk-in closet, dining area for five people, laundry room, shower and steam room, and remote controlled movie screen that doubles as a curtain. Oh, and he lives here with his parents and three sisters. Such an example of a micro-apartment takes the idea of space as a luxury commodity to the extreme.
Living on the Move
“A HOME IS NOT A HOUSE”
Living on the Move considered just that – the home as a nomadic space. Here, there were very wacky ideas. Take, for example, Ettore Sottsass’ ‘Modular Environments’, which combined architecture and furniture for more flexible living. As seen below, the muted colours, cheap materials and simple forms positioned furniture as a tool as opposed to a possession. Units could be easily moved around and reconfigured as desired.
The exhibit also included Haus-Rucker-Co’s architecture without walls and Han Holloein’s 1969 Mobile Office. Despite being futuristic and ‘out there’, they predicted our current networked world pretty well – where tech blurs the boundaries between the home and the office.
I guess the idea is that 20th century designers dreamt up these homes that are nothing like ‘the now’ - in reality, current homes just aren’t that different from the past and they are still undeniably linked to physical space. However, thanks to the internet and devices that utilise it, we are able to live and work more flexibly and seamlessly – with digital nomads embracing this most.
Living Smart
“A HOUSE IS A MACHINE FOR LIVING IN”
The aim of smart ‘things’ was to reduce the role of the 1950s housewife by outsourcing domestic work to machines. The idea was to move away from the home as a space for chores and towards the home as a space for leisure. The RCA-Whirlpool’s Miracle Kitchen of the Future (1959) looked to do just that, featuring an autonomous, radio controlled vacuum cleaner, adjustable sinks and a dishwasher that moved around a kitchen on a track.
This vision has evolved into today’s smart home. The labour-saving principles still form the foundations, but it is the Internet of Things and the connected devices through which labour-saving is achieved. Such devices use data to predict habits and preferences - for example, the Nest Learning Thermostat learns user’s temperature preferences throughout the day and then implements these.
Nevertheless, such complex ideas have always been ridiculed. Heath Robinson’s drawings show absurd contraptions being used to perform small, simple tasks, mocking the mechanisms at play.
What’s more, gender roles remain unchanged and, in reality, domestic work takes roughly the same time as in the 1950s. The advertisement of household goods has long been inseparable from the female image. Linder fuses sexualised images of the female body with domestic appliances – the powerful result is a feminist critique of the gendered nature of such objects.
Living Autonomously
“THE AGE OF AUTOMATION IS GOING TO BE THE AGE OF ‘DO IT YOURSELF’”
While the smart home of the future attempted to modernise domestic life through machines, it ignored the human need for ritual. Living Autonomously highlighted some counter ideas to modernist views of progress – moving away from functionalism, towards seeing the home as a place of irrational and emotional needs.
Alternative ideas evoked forms that were natural and primitive, yet surreal and dreamlike. The Up chair by Gaetano Pesce (1969) was made of polyurethane – when designing the form of the chair, Pesce drew from silhouettes of an ancient fertility goddess.
The Partone (1971) was also made of polyurethane material.
As is the Gufram Cactus (1972), a decorative coat stand that playfully suggests that form does not need to follow function all of the time.
Thoughts
Yes, a lot of the ideas included in Home Futures seem wonderfully crazy. But they certainly provoke some interesting questions - the exhibition doesn’t necessarily answer such questions, rather it poses them to the audience, encouraging us all to imagine what the home of the future should be…
*Main image source: https://www.vogue.com.au/vogue-living/design/terence-conrans-design-museum-reopens-in-london/news-story/c199e79a8740fc45c60223dc09d2d53f
