The mostly site-specific architectural designs respond to the particular features of the urban or rural environments for which they were conceived yet also simultaneously address demographic and socioeconomic developments with international relevance. These developments are documented in the empirical part of the exhibition with internationally compiled data on the subject of living environments in a graphically attractive presentation. They include the pluralisation and individualisation of lifestyles and the increasing aging of society as well as issues of energy consumption and sustainability. In OPEN HOUSE, architecture does not avail itself of technology for its own sake, but as a means to an end to fulfil the needs and requirements of home occupants.

The fifteen visionary proposals are presented in the exhibition in three groups. The first group shows designs for houses and buildings with new floor plan concepts, reactive walls, and new interfaces between architecture and digital technologies. With the second group, the emphasis is less on buildings than on systems and concepts for new forms of living and better use of existing resources. In many of these projects, the Internet often plays a primary role. The third group exemplifies some of the most interesting developments currently going on in the area of new materials. They represent some of the new "tools” that will be available to architecture in the future and that enable a dynamisation of formerly static architectural elements.


In order to classify and evaluate predictions of potential future developments, it is helpful and worthwhile to compare them with earlier versions of what the future would be like. As an introduction and comparison with the contemporary works, OPEN HOUSE therefore presents a retrospective of homes of the future and urban planning utopias from the 20th century. These are likewise illustrated with numerous architectural models. These include influential designs of the architectural avant-garde as well as visions of the home once promoted by industry and business that today seem almost bizarre or whimsical. Through this retrospective view, it becomes evident that certain ideal notions turn up again and again in future visions of living. Examples of such recurring ideas are household automation, industrialised serial production of housing units, and mobile living. Much of what used to be merely a distant vision of the future has now shifted toward the realm of feasibility. Hence, the exhibition also poses the question: How do we want to live?