Home Stories

Our homes are an expression of the way we live, they shape our every-day routines and fundamentally affect our well-being. Interior design for the home sustains a giant, global supply chain of furniture, textiles, decorations, and other lifestyle accessories. Likewise, both past and present trends from the world of domestic interiors feed an entire branch of the media, including magazines, television programming, blogs, and social media channels. However, while an increasing number of questions regarding housing are at the forefront of both the private and political agendas today, the question of dwelling, or how to live, is found increasingly to be lacking in serious discourse. It is time to review the interior design of our homes. From February to August 2020, the Vitra Design Museum has presented a major exhibition on the contemporary private interior and its evolution. In a captivating narrative beginning in the present day and leading visitors back in time, the exhibition highlights the important shifts that have shaped interiors over the past 100 years. From the current issues facing interior design - such as the more efficient use of dwindling urban space to the blurring of work-life boundaries - the journey includes our fascination with loft-living in the 1970s, the shift from formal to informal dwelling in the 1960s, the rise of household appliances in the 1950s, and the introduction of open-space planning in the 1920s. The exhibition is designed by the Milan based studio Space Caviar. It is organized around 15 to 20 iconic interiors by architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Finn Juhl, and Claude Parent; artists like Andy Warhol, Roland Penrose, and Lee Miller; as well as interior designers such as Elsie de Wolfe and Cecil Beaton. In addition to these main case studies, exhibits from thematically related projects broaden perspectives on interior design. In presenting interiors by outstanding representatives from different fields, the exhibition reflects on how interior design has always been inspired, enriched, and shaped by other disciplines, not only architecture and product design, but by fashion and the performing arts as well. Constituting a compelling sensorial journey through the past decades of the private dwelling, the exhibition includes models, drawings, furniture, films, and other media. After initial presentation at the Vitra Design Museum, the exhibition is on an international tour of selected museums. 

Space
600 – 1,200 m² / 6,000 – 12,000 sq ft

Curator
Jochen Eisenbrand, Vitra Design Museum

Consultants
Joseph Grima, Jasper Morrison

Detailed information
Illustrated Concept
Exhibition Film

Exhibition Tour 
08.02.2020 – 28.02.2021, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany
27.03.2021 – 12.09.2021, Design Museum Gent, Gent, Belgium 
20.10.2021 – 29.05.2022, Hofmobiliendepot, Vienna, Austria
06.04.2023 – 01.10.2023, Hyundai Motorstudio Busan, Korea 

For further information please contact Cora.Harris@design-museum.de.

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