The home interior is a measure of time. It envelops and reveals the home, the private sphere; it explains how we deal with the past, as well as with the things that surround us. It shows how the complex world around us forms part of our lives. A history of the home interior can also be read as a historiography of everyday life, which is more and more in the grip of technology, as well as about changing attitudes towards family relationships, privacy and publicity, consumption and information. Although the interior of a home can be very personal, in the past century this meant that the interior has been a theme par excellence that architects use to reflect on modern dwelling, and a tool for unfolding future visions about dwelling and everyday life. Dwelling, after all, is very close to the skin, and the home is also an accessible tool for drawing attention to the future.
This issue of DASH examines the interior as a tool for depicting architectural visions by publishing 15 exhibited interiors from the last century – interiors that were not intended to be lived in, but that instead had an artistic, educational or commercial purpose; in many of these cases, the drawings were also reconstructed. This documentation includes plans by Peter Behrens, H.P. Berlage, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Joe Columbo, Ugo La Pietra, Kengo Kuma and Hella Jongerius. These projects have been framed by essays written by Irene Cieraad, Fredie Floré and Rika Devos, Peter Lang, Hans Teerds and Jurjen Zeinstra, in which the period rooms are placed in their specific era, the influence of IKEA is examined and the relationship between the public and private is investigated. In an interview with Louise Schouwenberg of the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the relationship between the interior and the things that we surround ourselves with is discussed in the light of a vision for the future of dwelling.
The cover of this issue of DASH shows a home interior that was exhibited in Berlin in 1952, at the exhibition ‘Wir bauen ein besseres Leben’ / ‘We’re Building a Better Life’. In this model interior, which was designed like a brilliant white laboratory, American actors showed the audience that had flocked to Berlin how […]
In her novel The Fountainhead (1943), American author and philosopher Ayn Rand describes an interior within the first four pages: the student room of her protagonist, architect Howard Roark. This early introduction of an interior is an indication of its importance, in novels as much as in daily life. A previously unfamiliar interior can tell […]
In ‘The Exhibitionist House’, Beatriz Colomina highlights how the house has become ‘the most important vehicle for the investigation of architectural ideas in this century’.1The role that what I would call ‘style rooms’ – exhibited house interiors – have played in this process should not be underestimated. These temporary and relatively simple architectural installations are […]
Model interiors and model homes were a recurring element at the world fairs of the previous century. At Expo 58, the Brussels World Fair of 1958, these forms of presentation were also a common feature. Various participating nations saw the model interior or the model home as a powerful didactic instrument with which to draw […]
[Part 1: Karma Sutra] Renowned architect Giovanni Michelucci and art critic Laura Vinca Masini were the two principle curators for ‘La Casa Abitata’ (the Inhabited House), the 1965 Florentine biennale on interior architecture and design that introduced a set of walk-through room installations inside Palazzo Strozzi. The all but forgotten Florentine exhibition brought together some […]
In 2013, IKEA, the furniture store from Sweden, celebrated the 35th anniversary of the opening of its first branch in the Netherlands. The retrospective exhibition in an old factory building in Amsterdam told not only the history of how IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad had turned a simple catalogue firm into a multinational, but also the […]
The Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), which evolved from its forerunner the Akademie Industriële Vormgeving Eindhoven, has played an important role in design education in the Netherlands since the Second World War. The academy has been considered one of the most important design schools in the world since the 1990s and, as a result, attracts an […]
The project documentation for this eleventh edition of DASH shows 15 style rooms that cover a time span of more than 100 years. These home interiors, which were never inhabited, were explicitly designed to illustrate a contemporary or futuristic form of dwelling at exhibitions and fairs. This distinguishes them from the traditional style rooms or […]
In 1902 the department store Wertheim in Berlin started to showcase state-of-the-art living spaces designed by contemporary architects and artists. A set up of two typical Berlin flats was built into one of the sales areas, allowing the visitors to walk through real-life rooms. Among the contributing architects were British architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, […]
BerlinHendrik Petrus BerlageBy Julia Hegenwald & Jurjen Zeinstra
In April 1905, the department store A. Wertheim opened their second exhibition of ‘Moderne Wohnräume’, replacing the previous permanent exhibition from 1902. Among the 16 participating architects was Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, who designed a living/dining room…
In 1925, the year in which Le Corbusier exhibited his Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau at the ‘Exposition des Arts Décoratifs’ in Paris, the ‘Jahresschau Deutscher Arbeit’ was held for the fourth time at Dresden’s downtown exhibition area, this time under the leadership of city architect Paul Wolf. Whereas previous exhibitions had themes such as ‘porcelain, […]
StuttgartLilly Reich and Ludwig Mies van der RoheBy Jurjen Zeinstra
Not only the Weissenhofsiedlung was built in the context of the Werkbund exhibition ‘Die Wohnung’ in Stuttgart, in the centre of town an exhibition also took place, featuring different products and materials that play a role in the construction and furnishing of homes. Mies van der Rohe asked Werkbund member Lilly Reich, who had made […]
ParisCharlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre JeanneretBy Dick van Gameren
With the arrival of Charlotte Perriand in the Parisian studio of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1927, the three designers began to develop a series of furniture designs. The designs were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne beginning in 1928. This annual art exhibition, which started in 1903 and still takes place in Paris, had […]
In the late 1920s, Italian architecture was still operating within the boundaries of academic thinking, and clung to neoclassicism and a decorative style concept, whereas in the surrounding world, the Modern Movement was already in full swing. Among the first young people to oppose this conservative Italian academic culture were Luigi Figini (1903-1984) and Gino […]
Sweden speaks. In 1939, this motto was written in large letters on the Swedish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. The pavilion, designed by Sven Markelius, drew a lot of attention, not least because of several style rooms that were furnished by leading designers. One of the rooms, a studio, was designed and furnished […]
Danish architect Finn Juhl (1912-1989), the ‘father of Danish design’, was commissioned in 1950 by Norwegian art historian T. Krohn-Hansen (at the time, director of the Nordenfjeldeske Kunstindustrimuseum in Trondheim) to furnish one of the museum’s rooms as an office, to be part of the museum’s permanent collection. This workspace was meant to enter into […]
BrusselsKarl Augustinus Bieber and Ernst Althoff, drawings Marie MarcksBy Fredie Flore & Rika Devos
The pavilion of the Federal Republic of Germany at Expo 58 in Brussels was designed by architects Egon Eiermann and Sep Ruf. The exhibition route led visitors via light walkways through eight individual, transparent volumes of different sizes. Visitors reached the ‘City and Home’ sector via the top floor, which was dedicated to the theme […]
In 1972, the influential exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’ was held at the MoMA in New York. Curator Emilio Ambasz assembled 180 household objects and 11 installations by Italian designers in order to investigate the relationship between the designer, the user and (industrialized) society. Italy, which at that time was the leading country in […]
First referred to as Le tombe degli architetti, Superstudio’s designs for the Istogrammi and subsequent Misura furniture series were conceived as countermeasures geared to undermine the market’s unending demands for new consumer products. The earliest Istogrammi came in a number of shapes and varieties that together constituted a comprehensive set of household solutions for everyday […]
In 1971, Italian architect and artist Ugo La Pietra had already developed a first draft of the Casa Telematica for the exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’, which took place in 1972 at the MoMa in New York. The concept included a house with a triangular cross section, which La Pietra used to examine the […]
Jasper Morrison is considered to be one of the most successful product designers of our time. He has built up a body of work that ranges from furniture to kitchen appliances and shoes. His work often has a somewhat neutral or anonymous appearance, which also characterizes many design products from the 1950s and 1960s. Morrison […]
CologneHella JongeriusBy Louise Schouwenberg Jurjen Zeinstra
The annual furniture fair in Cologne has a tradition of inviting leading designers to present their vision of ‘ideal living’ in the form of an installation. Hella Jongerius was invited in 2005…
At the 2007 Milan Furniture Fair, the Japanese project developer Mitsui Fudosan presented a concept home called Tsunago, designed by Kengo Kuma. The home showed ideas and concepts that the company wanted to use in apartment buildings for the Japanese market. Tsunago means ‘connect’, and Kuma elaborated on this theme on various levels. A connection […]
DASH #11 – Interiors on Display
ByThe home interior is a measure of time. It envelops and reveals the home, the private sphere; it explains how we deal with the past, as well as with the things that surround us. It shows how the complex world around us forms part of our lives. A history of the home interior can also be read as a historiography of everyday life, which is more and more in the grip of technology, as well as about changing attitudes towards family relationships, privacy and publicity, consumption and information. Although the interior of a home can be very personal, in the past century this meant that the interior has been a theme par excellence that architects use to reflect on modern dwelling, and a tool for unfolding future visions about dwelling and everyday life. Dwelling, after all, is very close to the skin, and the home is also an accessible tool for drawing attention to the future.
This issue of DASH examines the interior as a tool for depicting architectural visions by publishing 15 exhibited interiors from the last century – interiors that were not intended to be lived in, but that instead had an artistic, educational or commercial purpose; in many of these cases, the drawings were also reconstructed. This documentation includes plans by Peter Behrens, H.P. Berlage, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Joe Columbo, Ugo La Pietra, Kengo Kuma and Hella Jongerius. These projects have been framed by essays written by Irene Cieraad, Fredie Floré and Rika Devos, Peter Lang, Hans Teerds and Jurjen Zeinstra, in which the period rooms are placed in their specific era, the influence of IKEA is examined and the relationship between the public and private is investigated. In an interview with Louise Schouwenberg of the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the relationship between the interior and the things that we surround ourselves with is discussed in the light of a vision for the future of dwelling.
Editorial Dash #11
By Frederique van AndelThe cover of this issue of DASH shows a home interior that was exhibited in Berlin in 1952, at the exhibition ‘Wir bauen ein besseres Leben’ / ‘We’re Building a Better Life’. In this model interior, which was designed like a brilliant white laboratory, American actors showed the audience that had flocked to Berlin how […]
Lebensraum
Notes on Hannah Arendt and the Private Realm
By Hans TeerdsIn her novel The Fountainhead (1943), American author and philosopher Ayn Rand describes an interior within the first four pages: the student room of her protagonist, architect Howard Roark. This early introduction of an interior is an indication of its importance, in novels as much as in daily life. A previously unfamiliar interior can tell […]
‘In welchem Style sollen wir wohnen?’
Exhibited Interiors in a Debate about Style
By Jurjen ZeinstraIn ‘The Exhibitionist House’, Beatriz Colomina highlights how the house has become ‘the most important vehicle for the investigation of architectural ideas in this century’.1The role that what I would call ‘style rooms’ – exhibited house interiors – have played in this process should not be underestimated. These temporary and relatively simple architectural installations are […]
Model Interiors and Model Homes at Expo 58
Exhibited Interiors in a Debate about Style
By Fredie Flore & Rika DevosModel interiors and model homes were a recurring element at the world fairs of the previous century. At Expo 58, the Brussels World Fair of 1958, these forms of presentation were also a common feature. Various participating nations saw the model interior or the model home as a powerful didactic instrument with which to draw […]
Superstudio: Inhabited Space
By Peter Lang[Part 1: Karma Sutra] Renowned architect Giovanni Michelucci and art critic Laura Vinca Masini were the two principle curators for ‘La Casa Abitata’ (the Inhabited House), the 1965 Florentine biennale on interior architecture and design that introduced a set of walk-through room installations inside Palazzo Strozzi. The all but forgotten Florentine exhibition brought together some […]
IKEA and the Dutch Domestic Landscape
By Irene CieraadIn 2013, IKEA, the furniture store from Sweden, celebrated the 35th anniversary of the opening of its first branch in the Netherlands. The retrospective exhibition in an old factory building in Amsterdam told not only the history of how IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad had turned a simple catalogue firm into a multinational, but also the […]
‘Living and Things’
Interview with Louise Schouwenberg, Design Academy Eindhoven / Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam
By Jurjen ZeinstraThe Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), which evolved from its forerunner the Akademie Industriële Vormgeving Eindhoven, has played an important role in design education in the Netherlands since the Second World War. The academy has been considered one of the most important design schools in the world since the 1990s and, as a result, attracts an […]
Plan Documentation Interiors on Display
By Jurjen ZeinstraThe project documentation for this eleventh edition of DASH shows 15 style rooms that cover a time span of more than 100 years. These home interiors, which were never inhabited, were explicitly designed to illustrate a contemporary or futuristic form of dwelling at exhibitions and fairs. This distinguishes them from the traditional style rooms or […]
Speisezimmer
BerlinPeter BehrensBy Jurjen ZeinstraIn 1902 the department store Wertheim in Berlin started to showcase state-of-the-art living spaces designed by contemporary architects and artists. A set up of two typical Berlin flats was built into one of the sales areas, allowing the visitors to walk through real-life rooms. Among the contributing architects were British architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, […]
Wohnzimmereinrichtung
BerlinHendrik Petrus BerlageBy Julia Hegenwald & Jurjen ZeinstraIn April 1905, the department store A. Wertheim opened their second exhibition of ‘Moderne Wohnräume’, replacing the previous permanent exhibition from 1902. Among the 16 participating architects was Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, who designed a living/dining room…
Kleinbürgerliches Wohnzimmer
DresdenHeinrich TessenowBy Frederique van AndelIn 1925, the year in which Le Corbusier exhibited his Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau at the ‘Exposition des Arts Décoratifs’ in Paris, the ‘Jahresschau Deutscher Arbeit’ was held for the fourth time at Dresden’s downtown exhibition area, this time under the leadership of city architect Paul Wolf. Whereas previous exhibitions had themes such as ‘porcelain, […]
Glasraum
StuttgartLilly Reich and Ludwig Mies van der RoheBy Jurjen ZeinstraNot only the Weissenhofsiedlung was built in the context of the Werkbund exhibition ‘Die Wohnung’ in Stuttgart, in the centre of town an exhibition also took place, featuring different products and materials that play a role in the construction and furnishing of homes. Mies van der Rohe asked Werkbund member Lilly Reich, who had made […]
Equipement intérieur d’une habitation
ParisCharlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre JeanneretBy Dick van GamerenWith the arrival of Charlotte Perriand in the Parisian studio of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in 1927, the three designers began to develop a series of furniture designs. The designs were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne beginning in 1928. This annual art exhibition, which started in 1903 and still takes place in Paris, had […]
Ambiente di soggiorno e terrazzo
MilanLuigi Figini and Gino PolliniBy Paul KuitenbrouwerIn the late 1920s, Italian architecture was still operating within the boundaries of academic thinking, and clung to neoclassicism and a decorative style concept, whereas in the surrounding world, the Modern Movement was already in full swing. Among the first young people to oppose this conservative Italian academic culture were Luigi Figini (1903-1984) and Gino […]
Svenskt Tenns utställningsrum
New YorkJosef Frank and Estrid EricsonBy Dick van GamerenSweden speaks. In 1939, this motto was written in large letters on the Swedish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. The pavilion, designed by Sven Markelius, drew a lot of attention, not least because of several style rooms that were furnished by leading designers. One of the rooms, a studio, was designed and furnished […]
Interiør -52
TrondheimFinn JuhlBy Paul KuitenbrouwerDanish architect Finn Juhl (1912-1989), the ‘father of Danish design’, was commissioned in 1950 by Norwegian art historian T. Krohn-Hansen (at the time, director of the Nordenfjeldeske Kunstindustrimuseum in Trondheim) to furnish one of the museum’s rooms as an office, to be part of the museum’s permanent collection. This workspace was meant to enter into […]
Wohnung für eine Familie von 6 Personen
BrusselsKarl Augustinus Bieber and Ernst Althoff, drawings Marie MarcksBy Fredie Flore & Rika DevosThe pavilion of the Federal Republic of Germany at Expo 58 in Brussels was designed by architects Egon Eiermann and Sep Ruf. The exhibition route led visitors via light walkways through eight individual, transparent volumes of different sizes. Visitors reached the ‘City and Home’ sector via the top floor, which was dedicated to the theme […]
Total Furnishing Unit
New YorkJoe Colombo with Ignazia FavataBy Pierijn van der PuttIn 1972, the influential exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’ was held at the MoMA in New York. Curator Emilio Ambasz assembled 180 household objects and 11 installations by Italian designers in order to investigate the relationship between the designer, the user and (industrialized) society. Italy, which at that time was the leading country in […]
La serie Misura
Domus, no. 517SuperstudioBy Peter LangFirst referred to as Le tombe degli architetti, Superstudio’s designs for the Istogrammi and subsequent Misura furniture series were conceived as countermeasures geared to undermine the market’s unending demands for new consumer products. The earliest Istogrammi came in a number of shapes and varieties that together constituted a comprehensive set of household solutions for everyday […]
La Casa Telematica
MilanUgo La PietraBy Hans TeerdsIn 1971, Italian architect and artist Ugo La Pietra had already developed a first draft of the Casa Telematica for the exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’, which took place in 1972 at the MoMa in New York. The concept included a house with a triangular cross section, which La Pietra used to examine the […]
Some New Items for the Home – Part I
BerlinJasper MorrisonBy Jurjen ZeinstraJasper Morrison is considered to be one of the most successful product designers of our time. He has built up a body of work that ranges from furniture to kitchen appliances and shoes. His work often has a somewhat neutral or anonymous appearance, which also characterizes many design products from the 1950s and 1960s. Morrison […]
Ideal House
CologneHella JongeriusBy Louise Schouwenberg Jurjen ZeinstraThe annual furniture fair in Cologne has a tradition of inviting leading designers to present their vision of ‘ideal living’ in the form of an installation. Hella Jongerius was invited in 2005…
Tsunago
MilanKengo KumaBy Pierijn van der PuttAt the 2007 Milan Furniture Fair, the Japanese project developer Mitsui Fudosan presented a concept home called Tsunago, designed by Kengo Kuma. The home showed ideas and concepts that the company wanted to use in apartment buildings for the Japanese market. Tsunago means ‘connect’, and Kuma elaborated on this theme on various levels. A connection […]