Home Futures
24 April – 24 August 2019
Want to know the future? Look at the past! That’s the basic idea behind our Home Futures exhibition. We’ve brought together lots of visionary, daft and innovative projects from the last century – some of them eerily topical even today.
The Home Futures exhibition focuses on what our vision of the future home has been historically. Architects and designers of the 20th century saw the home as a testing ground. Some of their projects have come to fruition, but some of the crazier experiments never went any further.
In the post-war period, many people dreamed of an automated home with domestic appliances that ran by themselves. These days we have robot vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers, and speakers that can both speak and listen. But what’s the effect of that on our privacy?
In the 1960s, we began to dream about a connected lifestyle. With the advent of WiFi, smartphones and apps, many of our science fiction fantasies have become a reality. How has that influenced us as human beings, for better or worse?
At IKEA, we always have one foot in the past and one in the future. We use research to try to predict what needs people will have five, ten or even fifty years into the future. The Home Futures exhibition is part of this, and is presented in association with Design Museum London.