Home Stories

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.