12 Trends 2010

Foto: Koelnmesse, Karsten Jipp

Furniture looks a little different every spring too, and style and colour trends change the face of interior design. But in contrast to fashion, developments in design cannot be entirely explained by changing tastes and the desire to reinvent oneself over and over again.

Of course the arrival of the miniskirt says something about our outlook on life too, but the way we furnish our homes is more than that. It is a direct reflex triggered by social influences, a response in which our life patterns, everyday rituals, ideals, relationship structures, consumer mindset, social conditions, world views and aspirations express themselves in material form. Anybody who observes furniture design and interior design eventually ends up asking not just how but why these developments occur. The twelve interior lifestyle trends presented here shed light on both aspects: the aesthetic and functional features of the products and the motives for current and future interior lifestyles.

08_Interior Concepts
Reinventing rooms
As our moral concepts and life patterns change, new floor plan models are emerging too. Even today, various living zones are merging into spacious all-in-one rooms. The latest architectural concepts propagate one-room homes in which only the sleeping and private areas are separated off. The walls between the kitchen, dining area and living room are falling fast, just as they are between the bedroom and bathroom, which are merging into a private spa equipped only with such partitions as are absolutely essential for regulating the indoor climate (but with no toilet). In the long term, however, the need for more space and the expansion of the “family” circle to include friends and guests will lead to greater differentiation of rooms and their contents again, without surrendering the spaciousness of a single main recreation room. Rooms with functions for individual needs – like a computer corner, playroom, virtual dressing rooms, study, fitness or meditation room, reading gallery or the good old ironing room – will be used as areas of retreat. That’s just as feasible in a patchwork house for a patchwork family as it is in modularly structured rooms for single households.

Author: Frank A. Reinhardt
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Topics:

• Title: Living the future today
• Introduction
• 12 Interior lifestyle trends