Histories and Myths of the 21st Century Home Festival

What would the architects and designers of the 20th-century have thought of the home today? How might Le Corbusier have designed a smart home? Would Superstudio have created an Amazon Echo?

This one-day festival of ideas will summon the spirits of past architects and designers to examine how new technologies are transforming our idea of home. Through presentations, discussions and performance, leading designers and theorists will ask how 20th-century visions of the home have been realised, or not, in the 21st-century. Topics covered include: domestic space in the age of big data; the effects of climate change on domestic living; and the role of utopian thinking for design in the present.

During the day, students from the MA Interaction Design Communication programme at London College of Communication, UAL, will take over the museum through interactive performances, installations and hands-on activities. Visitors to the festival will also have access to the Design Museum's current exhibition Home Futures throughout the day.

Histories and Myths of the 21st-Century Home is co-produced by the curatorial collective Haunted Machines (Natalie Kane and Tobias Revell), design students from the MA Interaction Design Communication programme at London College of Communication, UAL, and the Design Museum.

Bakala Auditorium

11:00 – Welcome from the Design Museum, Haunted Machines and LCC.

11:15 – Introduction from Haunted Machines

11:30 – Panel 1: Demons and Devices

Connected devices have radically transformed our relationship with the home. Surrounded by squawking, beeping and blinking devices that appear to have their own hidden motives, it’s easy to believe the home is haunted. We have struggled to reconcile the alleged promise of freedom and autonomy these devices give, with a reality of passive surveillance, intrusive updates and unclear agency. This panel discusses the new relationships we are forging with the smart-home and the power-dynamics embedded within them.

Corinna Gardner, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Sarah Kember

12:45 – Interventions from EKOO Studio and White Rabbit

13:00 – Lunch Break

14:00 – Panel 2: Ether and Ecosystems

The imminent threat of climate change and the destruction of ecosystems has brought the networks and infrastructures we depend on into sharp relief. Normally opaque, these networks of dependency extend beyond living nature to the devices in our hands to the plastic afloat on the sea for ten thousand years. This panel explores the use of stories, myths and data to respond to the ongoing collapse of the systems we depend on to live.

Anab Jain, Jennifer Gabrys

15:00 – Interventions from Undirected and Trams Infection

15:15 – Comfort Break

15:30 – Panel 3: Alternatives and Afterlives

Design’s role in driving collective imaginations of the future has multiplied the range of homes, cities and forms of life we could have had. However, most of these visions have failed, becoming ironic side notes in the history of utopia. This panel discusses the possibilities for utopian thinking and the role of future visions in the present. Through contemporary technologies, might we be able to resurrect hope of other worlds or are they hopelessly mired in the problems of design and technology today?

Alison Powell, Matt Malpass, Henry Cooke

16:30 – Interventions from Homed Nomad and Tetra Studio

16:45 – Closing Remarks

17:00 – Event ends

Around the Museum

During the day, the Design Museum will be transformed by a series of newly commissioned performances, installations and interventions exploring domestic living in the 21st century. Created by students from London College of Communication’s MA Interaction Design and Visual Communication programme, topics range from the future of artificial intelligence in the home to the politics of privacy.