Walker Art Center | The Home Show

Not since the postwar housing boom of the 1950s has there been such a powerful renewal of interest in domestic design. In the last fifty years, we have witnessed a shift in the very nature of the home. New environs such as home offices, hi-tech media rooms, and customized spaces for redefined families have challenged the notion of the "one size fits all" house - we now expect our homes to serve more functions than ever before. Extending through three galleries, this four-part exhibition examines how change has shaped our dwellings, tracing a half century of ideas and ideals of home and contemporary living.

Also in the third gallery is a presentation featuring the work of Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bennett, whose elaborately detailed floor plans of famous TV residences"from such classics as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch" point to 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 have often been mirrored in our own domestic architecture. 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.

The exhibition begins by presenting two historically groundbreaking Walker design projects. On view is a re-creation of the living and dining room of Idea House II, one of the first full-scale, working houses built by a museum to illustrate the efficacy of modern home design. Constructed in 1947, the house was outfitted with the latest home technologies and demonstrated the benefits of open and efficient space planning and the use of lightweight, modern furniture. By utilizing standard building materials and mass-produced furnishings, the project championed quality, practical design for the average consumer. Another Walker showcase for design at mid-century was The Everyday Art Gallery, a museum space dedicated to featuring well-designed products for the home. The space has been re-created for this exhibition, updated with three contemporary displays: a look at innovative uses of plastics for home furnishings, new Scandinavian design, and contemporary functional ceramics.

The second gallery presents The Un-Private House, an exhibition introducing 26 projects by international architects who have considered new issues surrounding the design of the home in contemporary society: 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 of today's home? 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? Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the exhibition presents innovative home designs range from New York-style lofts to urban row houses to detached suburban residences designed for sites in the United States, Japan, South America, and Europe between 1988 and 1999.

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). Over the course of the summer, architecture students and their professors will conduct classes, workshops, and critiques, display their work in progress, and organize public presentations of their work in the exhibition space itself, an environment designed by the students. Exposing the design process to museum visitors, the studio will focus on solving urban domestic design problems, both imagined and real. This 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.

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.