Interiors that defined the modern age
To mark the launch of his new book, Key Interiors Since 1900, Graeme Brooker chooses six of the most distinctive and groundbreaking interior design schemes of the modern age.
HOME
Casa Devalle,
Carlo Mollino.
Turin, Italy. 1939-40
Photo: courtesy Museo Casa Mollino
This small apartment (just 70 sq m) was conceived as an organic and surreal entity, one that combined Mollino's love of aeronautical engineering and the human body. It is unique in that the scenographic interior was pragmatically designed to reflect the occupant's needs, (his friend the architect Giorgio Devalle), but it was also formed to project Devalle's desires and aspirations: an innovatory precursor of the house as a stage-set interior.
Photo: courtesy Museo Casa Mollino
WORK
Reactor Studios
Brooks + Scarpa (Formerly Pugh and Scarpa)
Santa Monica, USA, 1998.
Photo: courtesy Brooks + Scrapa/Marvin Rand
This office/sudio embodies two innovations in workspace design: it exemplifies the communication of the interior by the designer, as a reflection of a particular company's identity and culture. It is also significant for the use of reworked shipping containers, the early beginnings of using 'off-the-peg' elements with which to create unique interior spaces.
RETAIL
Issey Miyake Store
Shiro Kuramata Design Studio
Tokyo, Japan, 1987
Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai
The innovatory idea of epitomising the ideas of the garments to be displayed was exemplified by this small retail space in a busy Tokyo department store. The designer wanted to signify the materials, ideas and construction of the garments yet also make the environment 'disappear' in order to stand out among its visually noisy context. In this 'invisible' department store concession Kurumata embodied the early ideas of minimalist interior design.
DISPLAY
British Music Experience
Land Design Studio
London, UK 2009
Photo: Nick Wood
Described as a 'comprehensively, conceptually, flamboyant Wikipedia' the BME is groundbreaking in its ideas, design and use of technologies in its desire to engage its audience and immerse them in a variety of sensorial audio environments. The requirements of a highly complex brief and the logistics of the site (inside the millennium dome) led the designers to create a carefully choreographed spectacular interactive interior space.
LEISURE
Royalton Hotel
Philippe Starck and Gruzen Samton Steinglass, (Executive Architect)
New York, USA. 1988
Photo: Richard Bryant/ARCAID
Starck's first 'destination' hotel, the Royalton, along with the Paramount (also in New York) was the one of the first hotels to cater to a market of 20-something globetrotting creatives, people who wanted an alternative to the dowdy and traditional hotel experience of the time. Starck, himself an international design celebrity, was uniquely positioned to deliver a space that met the requirements of its clientele.
CULTURE
Royal Exchange Theatre
Levitt Bernstein
Manchester, UK, 1976.
Photo: Matthew Weinreb
The adaptation of redundant existing buildings for a new use requires vision and perseverance. Still considered to be an exemplary performance and audience space the royal exchange theatre was inserted into the redundant Cotton Exchange building in the form of a contemporary steel and glass structure. The new interior is still as striking today as when it was first built.
Graeme Brooker is head of the School of Fashion and Interiors at Middlesex University, London. He is interested in the cultural, historical and philosophical dimensions of the interior and the implications of reusing existing buildings. He has written several books on the subject of interiors, including Rereadings (2004).
Key Interiors Since 1900 is available to buy now.
