‘In welchem Style sollen wir wohnen?’

Exhibited Interiors in a Debate about Style

Authors

  • Jurjen Zeinstra TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

In ‘The Exhibitionist House’, Beatriz Colomina highlights how the house has become ‘the most important vehicle for the investigation of architectural ideas in this century’. The role that what I would call ‘style rooms’ – exhibited house interiors – have played in this process should not be underestimated. These temporary and relatively simple architectural installations are not only able to quickly demonstrate an idea to a large audience, but can also transcend the manifesto, the sales brochure, or the promotional leaflet by evoking an immediate illusion of the interior.

In my article, I want to position several of these style rooms in a debate about style and interiors that up to the present day remains of great importance to architecture and design. These specific interiors played a role in this debate at crucial moments in the first half of the twentieth century. Style, a key architectural concept, forms the foundation of many architectural-theoretical considerations and polemics, and is defined in the dictionary somewhat laboriously as the ‘collective characteristics of . . . artistic expression or way of presenting things or decorative methods proper to a person or school or period or subject.’

Author Biography

Jurjen Zeinstra, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Jurjen Zeinstra studied architecture at the Faculty of Architecture TU Delft and has been editor of the architectural magazines OASE and Forum. Together with Mikel van Gelderen he founded Zeinstra van Gelderen architecten, that has realized projects on various scales. Currently he works in the Department of Architecture as acting Associate professor in the Chair of Architecture of the Interior, where he teaches design. He initiated the program ‘Culture of Care’ in 2012 and has edited Amsterdam Places; Interiors, Buildings and Cities in 2013.

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Published

2018-06-01

How to Cite

Zeinstra, J. (2018). ‘In welchem Style sollen wir wohnen?’: Exhibited Interiors in a Debate about Style. DASH | Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, 7(11), 18–31. Retrieved from https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/dash/article/view/4957