Curator Jochen Eisenbrand guides you through the exhibition 'Home Stories. 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors'. Each episode is about one interior project in the exhibition.
Move to the first island with the disassembled bookcase.
No other company in the Western world has shaped today’s interiors as IKEA has. The company’s catchphrase, ‘democratic design’, alludes to the success of its products in fulfilling the promise of modernity’s avant-garde: making well-designed products available to the masses.
Move one island to the left.
The rising cost of land, property, and rent, especially in inner cities, has brought into sharp focus the efficient use of space in apartments. The Spanish office Elli designed this 33-square-metre living space that meets every need of the resident.
Walk to the freestanding island.
Arno Brandlhuber’s Antivilla near to Berlin offers strategies for efficiently optimising space and reflect a new definition of comfort and luxury which is based on simplicity and the language of material.
Move to the project in the back, against the wall.
Together with the inhabitants, a Victorian terrace of houses located in Liverpool was saved from urban decay by redesigning the interiors for contemporary needs, and by establishing workshops that reuses the building’s materials to create furnishings for the new spaces.
This is the slideshow in the corner.
For this exhibition, Jasper Morrison made a visual exploration of the question “what makes a good space?”.
We’ll first talk about the left half of the next, big island.
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld assembled an extensive Memphis-collection for his apartment with the help of the interior designer Andrée Putman. The space was considered one of the most iconic Memphis interiors in existence, before being auctioned off in 1991.
This project is the right half of the same island.
The American architect Michael Graves designed a small suite in the Manhattan apartment of Susan and John Reinhold. Graves introduced color to the interior by tinting the Reinhold suite in blue and rose tones. These colours became the hallmark of his approach to postmodernism, rich with illusion and references - from Art Deco to hotel interiors in the French style.
Move one island to the left.
In the 1960s, when the social upheavals also found expression in domestic interiors, philosopher Paul Virilio and the architect Claude Parent developed a particularly radical approach with their oblique architecture. In 1973, he designed his own house with this philosophy. The living and dining area was made up of carpeted and painted inclines. The position of the visitors was therefore no longer determined by furniture; everyone had to find a new position.
Move one interior to the left.
The concept of loft living emerged in the SoHo neighbourhood of New York in the 1960s, when artists set up studios in former workshops or storage buildings, to later move in entirely. Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory is one of the most prominent examples. It was an apartment, a meeting point for superstars, an artists’ studio, and a film studio.
Move one island to the left.
Kurokawa regarded the city as an organic process and its residents as urban nomads. The architect created two interconnected towers, to which 144 prefabricated live/work capsules were clipped. The individual capsules had completely standardised and built-in furnishings, and were replaceable.
Move one island to the left.
Verner Panton understood interior design as an exercise in three dimensions like almost no other designer: from the floor and walls to the ceiling. Instrumental to this holistic spatial understanding was Panton’s atmospheric use of colour and light.
This is the big sculpture in the middle.
The Fantasy Landscape broke with all traditional ideas of interior design: floors, walls, ceilings, and furniture seemingly formed into one organic unit. It was made for the Cologne Furniture Fair, where the chemical corporation Bayer rented an excursion boat that was transformed by well-known designers into a temporary exhibition space on the subject of contemporary living.
Go downstairs, this project is on your far right.
In the twentieth century, new technologies and material innovations often inspired ideas for the homes of the future. The House of the Future went on view in London at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition in 1956. Exhibition visitors could see into the interior from an elevated gallery, where they watched actors in futuristic costumes demonstrating all sorts of technical refinements.
This project is diagonally opposite, next to the stairs.
The history of the domestic interior can also be a matter of politics: During the Kitchen Debate Nixon and debated the merits of their respective social systems in a kitchen at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. In an attempt to convince his Soviet counterpart of the superiority of capitalism over communism, the American vice president presented a fully fitted kitchen equipped with electrical devices.
Turn around for this interior.
The pioneers of modernity viewed the modern interior as a liberation from the chore of housework. But modern design can become the opposite when representation is more important than functionality. No one has demonstrated this more drastically and humorously than filmmaker Jacques Tati. His film Mon Oncle is filmed in Villa Arpel, a villa fully equipped with all the latest modern gadgets, with all its consequences.
Move to the corner, under the stairs.
The opening up of the interior to nature characterised the 1950s and ’60s. A good example is Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro in Brazil. Her early sketches envisioned the interior as a wide, open space encompassing loosely arranged furniture, sculptures, and paintings, all framed by nature.
On the left of the previous interior.
The architect Finn Juhl placed particular importance on the interplay of furniture and art, which you can see in his own house in Denmark, over the years, Juhl repeatedly changed the furniture, testing out his designs within the spatial structure of his own four walls.
Turn around and walk diagonally across the room.
In 1949 Bernhard Rudofsky designed a residential garden for sculptor Constantino Nivola. The cubic room open only at the top, could be accessed from above via a staircase and formed a framework for observing the sky.
The one with the big sideboard.
The experience of space while in motion was a central concern of the Viennese architect Josef Frank. His Villa Beer appears closed towards the street but opens up to the garden. Textiles played an important role in Villa Beer. According to Frank, monochrome surfaces created unrest, while patterns created calm.