IDEA HOUSE II 1947

THE IDEA HOUSE
The exhibition begins by presenting two groundbreaking projects of the 1940s that reflected the explosion of interest in design and the home in mid-century America. In 1941, the Walker opened Idea House I--the first full-scale, working house built by a museum--to showcase the advantages of modern domestic design. By utilizing standard building materials and mass-produced furnishings, the project sought to demonstrate that quality design was attainable for the middle-class consumer. The Walker opened Idea House II in 1947 (no longer extant), a split-level, contemporary house filled with the latest technologies for the home. It illustrated the benefits of open and efficient space planning and the practicality of lightweight, modern furniture. A partial re-creation of the house's main living space serves as a focal point in the exhibition galleries, featuring historically accurate materials and furnishings by such modern design luminaries as Charles and Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, Isamu Noguchi, Walter von Nessen, and George Nelson.

Also on view is a new installation of the Everyday Art Gallery, once a Walker showcase for well-designed products for the home. Updated with contemporary products and displays, this aspect of the exhibition focuses on three components: a look at innovative uses of plastics for home furnishings, new Scandinavian design, and contemporary functional ceramics.

Shigeru Ban, Architect CURTAIN WALL HOUSE TOKYO   1995

THE UN-PRIVATE HOUSE
In the next gallery, The Un-Private House raises a number of potent questions: How do we design homes for domestic requirements that differ from those of the conventional nuclear family? How do we design homes that merge work space with living space? What role does technology play in the design? How do we design public and private spaces in the home, as definitions of both shift and overlap? How do we create flexible, convertible living spaces to serve different functions? Through 26 domestic design projects by international architects, The Un-Private House addresses these and other issues in inventive and surprising ways.

Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Un-Private House presents homes designed for sites in the United States, Japan, South America, and Europe between 1988 and 1999. These diverse projects range from New York-style lofts to urban row houses to detached suburban residences. Scale models are accompanied by photographs, drawings, and video presentations that allow visitors to explore the homes on multiple levels. In addition, an interactive interface in the gallery invites visitors to further investigate these residential designs via the Internet, where one may browse through images, diagrams, and plans as well as statements from the architects and clients.

HOUS-[E, ES, ING] ARCHITECTURE STUDIO
The third gallery of the exhibition contains an active design studio developed in collaboration with students and faculty from the Department of Architecture at the University of Minnesota's College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (CALA). Exposing the design process to museum visitors, the studio will focus on solving urban domestic design problems, both imagined and real. Over the course of the summer, architecture students and their professors will conduct classes, workshops, and critiques, display their work in progress, and hold public presentations in the exhibition space.

In the months prior to the exhibition, students in the studio researched issues of contemporary design through class meetings, public forums, roundtable discussions with community members (organized with the Walker's Community and Neighborhood Advisory Committee), and meetings with museum staff. The information determined the focus of their work this summer, and led to the students' design of the gallery space itself. This flexible environment has multiple functions, serving as a working studio, an exhibition space, a public meeting space, and a research room that includes a Web-site interface. The integration of exhibition and production, of gallery and classroom, of observation and interaction has few precedents and provides a rich opportunity to see, hear, and participate in the architectural design process.

Mark Bennett HOME OF LAVERNE DEFAZIO & SHIRLEY FINNEY  1990-1995

MARK BENNETT
The final component of The Home Show features the work of Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bennett, whose elaborately detailed floor plans of famous TV residences highlight the media's role in constructing our collective notions of the ideal home.

Drawing these fictional dwellings from memory, Bennett documents and reflects on the idealized and stereotyped notions of domesticity and family life as they have been perpetuated by mass culture--ideas that are in turn mirrored in our own domestic architecture. The artist's floor plans of homes from such classics as The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Brady Bunch narrate the American Dream, charting not only the architecture, but also the subtext of our culturally accepted models for living. The instant familiarity one often finds when viewing these imagined spaces reflects the penetrating influence of television into our own private houses from the 1950s onward.

Accompanying the exhibition is The Un-Private House, a richly-illustrated paperbound catalogue by Terence Riley, Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. $29.95 ($26.96 Walker members). Shop online.

Mark Bennett's collection of fantastic architecture is the focus of the new book TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes. $19.95 ($17.96 Walker members).

THE UNPRIVATE HOUSE WAS ORGANIZED BY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, AND WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE LILY AUCHINCLOSS FUND FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE.

THE HOME SHOW IS MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM ANDERSEN CORPORATION, COLDWELL BANKER BURNET, ROOM & BOARD, THE ARCHIE D. AND BERTHA H. WALKER FOUNDATION, AND THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS. IN-KIND SUPPORT PROVIDED BY HERMAN MILLER. PROMOTIONAL ASSISTANCE PROVIDED BY MPLS.ST.PAUL MAGAZINE. THE UN-PRIVATE HOUSE WAS ORGANIZED BY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, AND WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE LILY AUCHINCLOSS FUND FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE.

THE WALKER'S PRESENTATION OF THE UN-PRIVATE HOUSE WAS DESIGNED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BLU DOT DESIGN, MINNEAPOLIS.