Home Futures, Exhibition, The Design Museum, London: 7 November 2018-24 March 2019

This is archived material. It is for reference purposes only.

The Design Museum, in partnership with the IKEA Museum, is housing an exhibition of 200 items and experiences to test how closely 20th century designs of the future home came to accurately predict 21st century architecture.

This ‘home of the future’ exhibition is truly a ‘back to the future’ experience as you are transported back in time to only be propelled into the future. On wandering through the dream-like passages of the display, you are struck with the realisation that our today was someone else’s future. And the question is: have we fulfilled their expectations?

The future has been a hot topic of the imagination for generations, with sci-fi, utopias and dystopias rampaging freely. This was no different for 20th century architects and designers as they pondered the mind-boggling prospect of what the home of the future might look like. And the home of the future is now the home of the 21st century.

The Design Museum completes this transformation by juxtaposing archival avant-garde conjectures with reality, by placing previous predictions alongside contemporary commissions and objects. For example, historical ideas about a mechanised and compact home are displayed adjacent to contemporary connected devices and  sharing economy.

Among the 200 objects and interactivities housed in the Design Museum are the rare, priceless articles of the original furniture from the Smithsons’ House of the Future (1956); footage from the General Motors Kitchen of Tomorrow (1956); and an original model of Total Furnishing Unit by Joe Colombo (1972). All of which help trace the changing sociological and technological aspirations that shaped the 21st century home: the home of the future.

The Design Museum

224-238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG, London

Villa Arpel from Jacques Tati’s 1958 Oscar-winning ‘Mon Oncle’ is a satire of a modernist home. Image credit | 1:10 Model. Photo by Benoît Fougeiro.
Villa Arpel from Jacques Tati’s 1958 Oscar-winning ‘Mon Oncle’ is a satire of a modernist home. Image credit | 1:10 Model. Photo by Benoît Fougeiro.
Gufram became famous for merging art and design. Studio 65’s Bocca sofa, based on Salvador Dali’s design, became one of its best known pieces. Image credit | Gufram.
Gufram became famous for merging art and design. Studio 65’s Bocca sofa, based on Salvador Dali’s design, became one of its best known pieces. Image credit | Gufram.
The Televised House, 1982, imagined a home where TV screens would be integrated into every piece of domestic furniture. Image credit | Archivio Ugo La Pietra, Milano.
The Televised House, 1982, imagined a home where TV screens would be integrated into every piece of domestic furniture. Image credit | Archivio Ugo La Pietra, Milano.
The Pratone is a polyurethane lounge chair resembling a plot of grass, with the blades bending to your shape. Image credit | PRATONE by Ceretti, Derossi, Rosso. Photo by Gufram.
The Pratone is a polyurethane lounge chair resembling a plot of grass, with the blades bending to your shape. Image credit | PRATONE by Ceretti, Derossi, Rosso. Photo by Gufram.

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