Hyundai Motor × Vitra Design Museum present “Home Stories”
8 minute read
How will mobility shape our lives in our homes? In “Home Stories,” the latest exhibition created by Hyundai Motor in partnership with the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, we explore this question and present our vision for the future of mobility within our homes and living spaces. Read on to find out more about our “Home Stories” exhibition and how you can experience them for yourself.
Since 2021, the Hyundai Motorstudio Busan has been exploring life-enriching design innovations through several exhibitions that explore the studio’s concept: “Design to live by.” The most recent exhibition was Motorstudio’s fourth, “Habitat One,” on show from 2022 to 2023, featuring a collection of sustainable housing solutions for the future under the theme of “Shelter.”
The Hyundai Motor × Vitra Design Museum partnership
Hyundai Motorstudio Busan emphasizes the importance of future design with its concept “Design to live by” and provides various design-related content. Through this work, Hyundai Motor is continuously striving for progress in design and technology by pursuing its vision of bringing “Progress for Humanity.”
Hyundai Motor and the Vitra Design Museum share an interest in improving human life and celebrating inspiring design. The partnership began from a mutual understanding of the design vision that inspires our lives. The “Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine” (2021) exhibition presented Hyundai Motor's robotics technology and the innovations shaping the future of mobility.
The collaborative exhibition between Hyundai Motor and Vitra Design Museum transcends the conventional traveling exhibition, as it manifests the shared vision uniting both companies. The exhibition, "Home Stories," explores the intersection of residential environments with future mobility, presenting a profound exploration and unveiling an innovative vision.
Presenting “Home Stories”
The current exhibition, “Home Stories,” looks at how the culture of home life has evolved over the past century. The exhibition highlights the increasing significance of mobility, which is rapidly becoming an integral element of new living spaces—especially in today’s world, where the boundaries between our spaces are gradually fading.
'“Home Stories” takes visitors on an immersive journey—starting with a peek into the future with the IONIQ SEVEN concept car before traveling through a 100-year timeline and finally concluding with “Under a Flowing Field,” the latest installation by Studio Swine, a London-based design studio. A part of the installation is made from the same materials used in the SEVEN concept car. “Under a Flowing Field” offers a unique shelter space where visitors can enjoy an artistic vision of the future of mobility.
Co-organized by Hyundai Motor and the Vitra Design Museum, “Home Stories” invites visitors to experience how life at home has changed over time with the development of new ideas and technologies—as well as envision the fundamental role of mobility in future residential spaces. Let’s start with the concept car—a new living space.
“Home Stories” is now on view through October 1, 2023, at Hyundai Motorstudio Busan.
IONIQ SEVEN Concept–A New Living Space
With advancements in mobility technology providing us with more freedom of movement than ever before, the car of the future will no longer be a mere vessel for transportation, but it will be a new type of living space too. Leading off from the exhibition’s first chapter, our SEVEN concept introduces a new direction for the future of mobility that reflects this new direction.
The SEVEN concept encapsulates a new experience that transcends transportation. With revolving lounge chairs and a flat floor, passengers can work, play, and socialize while on the move.
Employing the benefits of autonomous driving, the lounge-like interior offers maximum comfort so that passengers can feel at home even during longer rides. Symbolizing the mobility of the future, the SEVEN concept presents a new type of shelter that seamlessly integrates transportation into residential space to give us all more flexibility in our lives.
Created with eco-friendly materials and nature-inspired designs, the SEVEN concept also introduces a more sustainable way of life.
Home Stories: 100 Years through
20 Visionary Interiors
The home is an expression of our lifestyles. It shapes our daily routines and influences our well-being. However, the various forms and styles of domestic living also reflect the general social, economic, and technological developments, which have driven innovations in the way we live over the past century. The interiors depicted in the “Home Stories” exhibition trace these developments retrospectively―from the present to the 1920s―not as a history of style but rather as a history of ideas.
The interiors represent either the initial appearance or especially vivid expressions of new concepts that shaped domestic living in the Western world. The domestic sphere is a refuge from the outside world and tends to resist change and evolve slowly over a long time. Nevertheless, the domestic space is not just a passive mirror of existing conditions, but also an agent for change. The intention of several of the interiors shown here was to liberate the spaces and their inhabitants from prevailing conventions.
Residential Space as a Resource
2000 - Today
The era of digitization is blurring the boundaries between public and private, between living and working space. To some degree, wireless internet access has made the functional allocation of space irrelevant.
Today, we frequently publish images of our private living space on the internet as part of the “sharing economy,” which means that it is being progressively commercialized and commodified. On the other hand, the rise of social media has also made the presentation of interior design more accessible and democratic, which may in turn have led to many home furnishings taking on a more homogenous appearance.
Subsequently, unusual and individually crafted interiors are especially fascinating and serve as a source of inspiration. Residential space in many city centers is becoming scarce, and thus is a valuable resource and object of speculation. In light of this, the focus has shifted to repurposing existing buildings, using space more efficiently, and exploring new energy concepts.
Interior Disruption
1960 - 1980
The social revolution of the 1960s found its reflection in the interior. Residential space and its furnishings began to shift, and new ways of living emerged that questioned established hierarchies, family models, and habits.
The artist studio that combined living and working space enjoyed renewed prominence in the form of lofts. And the Space Age inspired the concept of a fully equipped capsule that met the needs of an increasingly mobile society.
The 1970s became the decade of the interior, and the most interesting developments―domestic landscapes or built-in furnishings―were often designed independently of the architectural shell.
In the 1980s, postmodernity brought modern ideas about good form and material fidelity: everything became surface. Through this movement, ornament and decoration returned to the home, and furniture became a commodity or status symbol.
Nature and Technology
1940 - 1960
Modernism entered the domestic sphere via the kitchen at the end of World War II with the concept of modular systems and mechanization. In the competition between the Cold War superpowers, the automation of household appliances represented the ultimate expression of the living standards achieved under capitalism. While modern living and the domestic sphere of the future were marketed at exhibitions and trade shows, films humorously criticized and caricatured them.
The 1950s and ‘60s home was characterized by the opening up of the interior to nature thanks to plate glass, but also in near-seamless transitions between indoor and outdoor living spaces. The trend for natural shapes and materials notably influenced the Scandinavian interior, and furniture took on organic forms.
This was contrasted by the interiors of the 1920s and ’30s that rejected knick-knacks, decoration, and ornamentation to the extent that they felt quite sterile. Color and decoration were reinstated in the post-war interior with the careful use of textiles, collections of objects, and artworks.
The Birth of Modern Interiors
1920 - 1940
All interior design begins with the room. In the 1920s―in the wake of World War I and the social upheavals of the Russian Revolution―designers sought new approaches to the living space: open, flowing, and three-dimensional. In a kind of iconoclasm, decoration, and ornament were banished from the interior for aesthetic, practical, and hygienic reasons.
Tubular steel liberated seating from its overbearing appearance. Industrial and economic thought percolated through to the domestic sphere, shaping the new space- and step-saving plans and standardized furnishings. A less radical form of modern living emerged in the middle-class Viennese style of home furnishings.
Modern houses and apartments were designed mostly by architects that stood in contrast to the residential spaces created by interior designers. The interior―reconsidered without the burden of social convention, but laden with history―became a spatial autobiography that inspired the birth of the idea behind “Home Stories.”
Under a Flowing Field: A shelter where humans, technology, and nature coexist
“Under a Flowing Field” is a shelter that has been newly created by Studio Swine, inspired by Hyundai’s vision of future mobility. This future shelter brings together the latest technology and movements observed within nature. It also uses the eco-friendly materials that are used in the SEVEN electric car in the seating area.
The movement of the light that comes from the ceiling falls randomly like rain and gradually forms a certain pattern like the wind blowing in a field or the flight of birds, eventually taking over the space. Once the resonance of light reaches its peak, it creates a dynamic scene that fluctuates like a wave, creating another dramatic scene.
Under a Flowing Field, Borosilicate glass tubes, krypton & mixed media, dimensions variable, 2023.
The plasma space filled with neon tubes, which embodies the various movements of the light, visualizes “Ephemeral Tech,” a type of technology that was given this name by Studio Swine. Plasma is ethereal and a less common form of matter in comparison to solid, liquid, and gas. It takes the form of lightning in storms, the northern lights, or the tail of comets. However, despite appearing in rare phenomena on Earth, it takes up over 99% of the visible universe since the stars and our sun are in a state of plasma. Through the installation, visitors can expose themselves to the power of the invisible energy that surrounds them.
The space is a deep blue in a nod to the fact that this color is the color of our planet Earth, the only habitable shelter for life that we know of so far. Studio Swine created the exhibition with inspiration from Buckminster Fuller, who calls the Earth “mobility hurtling through the cold vacuum of space.” As a result, you can enjoy this contemplative space and fully immerse yourself in the blue, infinite universe.
The Archive Lounge
In the last rooms of the exhibition, you can explore the journey through the past and the records of “Home Stories.” You can explore the future shelter of a living space equipped with mobility, see the SEVEN’s design concepts and development background, the original catalogs, and the previous exhibition photos of “Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors.” There are also a variety of archives showing the world of Studio Swine’s works on display. The concept sketches and photos will help you to explore the meaning and philosophy behind “Under a Flowing Field.”
Read on to find out more about the “Home Stories” contributors: the Vitra Design Museum and Studio Swine.
About the Vitra Design Museum
Located in Weil am Rhein, Germany, the Vitra Design Museum numbers among the world’s leading design museums, with approximately 400 key objects as part of the extensive collection. The museum is dedicated to the research and presentation of design—past and present—and examines design’s relationship to architecture, art, and everyday culture. It also serves to inspire design enthusiasts around the world and puts on two major exhibitions every year.
“The interior design of residential spaces may well be the most popular of all design disciplines. Ideally, everyone has a home, so it is a topic that concerns everyone. Private interiors are often an expression of the personality of their residents, hence the idea of Home Story: The portrait of a person by way of their home interior.
- JOCHEN EISENBRAND, CHIEF CURATOR AT THE VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM, ON THE TOPIC OF “HOME STORIES: 100 YEARS, 20 VISIONARY INTERIORS”
About Studio Swine
Studio Swine is a design studio in London, co-founded in 2011 by Japanese architect Azusa Murakami and British artist Alexander Groves, both graduates of the Royal College of Art (RCA). Swine—an acronym for “Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers”—made its first breakthrough in 2012 with Sea Chair, a stool made entirely of plastic waste from the ocean. They went on to gain recognition for New Spring, which they presented at Milan Design Week in 2017. Also known as A.A. Murakami in the field of contemporary art, this visionary duo integrates elements of sculpture, installation, and video, and seeks to create new phenomena and immersive experiences.
Here at Hyundai, we’re creating mobility solutions that go beyond just transporting us from one place to another. Follow @hyundai on Instagram to see how we’re delivering this vision to the world.