The way that we arrange and use our homes is governed by fashion, by custom, and by culture. Fashions change relatively quickly. Chintz was fashionable in the seventeenth century, distinctly unfashionable in the nineteenth (“chintzy” came to mean cheap or vulgar), and fashionable again in the early twentieth century. The picture window arrived in the American bungalow in the 1950s but within thirty years was considered passé. Beanbag chairs were even more fleeting. I remember having one in the 1970s; it was red and Italian, whatever happened to it?
On the other hand, social customs—the way that we use our homes—are more durable. At the end of the nineteenth century, the living room supplanted the parlor as the main public gathering space in the house. Today, a hundred years later, the family room is on the ascendancy, but the living room has hardly disappeared, and I expect it to endure for some time. Who knows, it may even make a comeback.
The most enduring influences on our homes, however, are deeply embedded cultural ideas such as privacy, domesticity, and comfort. These took hundreds of years to emerge and, being deeply rooted, are resistant to change. The modernist movement tried to eliminate bourgeois comfort from the domestic interior but was brought up short. Modernism has survived, but it has had to come to terms with the idea of comfort—think of Eero Saarinen’s cozy womb chair.
I wrote Home more than twenty-five years ago. In the interim, a number of fashions have come and gone. Traditional furniture, such as wing chairs, Windsor chairs, and sofas, is still popular, but there has been a rediscovery of mid-twentieth-century modern furniture. This is not simply a retro fashion; the period 1940–60 represents one of the high points of furniture design, equivalent to the British eighteenth century. Another revived modernist idea is the open plan. Open-plan family homes were never popular—too noisy, not enough privacy—but the concept has become popular in the unexpected form of the urban loft. The most powerful domestic fashion trend is the importance given the kitchen, which is the result of our fascination with cuisine, cooking, and food in general. Grand nineteenth-century houses had kitchens that resembled commercial kitchens because they prepared food for so many people, but who would have thought that restaurant kitchen equipment would become the height of chic?
Has behavior in the home changed? Only slightly. Everything points in the direction of greater informality, hence the popularity of the family room, where people can eat, relax, and watch television, both as a family and with friends. In some ways, the family room is a version of the medieval hall, which did not discriminate between family and public behavior. But what is more striking is how many customs have not changed: sitting around a fireplace, sharing special celebratory meals, decorating the home for holidays.
What has also not changed is our idea of domesticity. The home is still a refuge from the outside world, especially as that world becomes more commercialized, more vulgar, and in some places more violent. The home as a private world has gained in importance, reflecting the atomization of taste and behavior. As there is no consensus about how we should behave, dress, and act in public, the public realm has become increasingly undisciplined. On the other hand, each of us can be whatever we want to be in the privacy of our own homes.
When Marco Velardi, the editor of Apartamento, a self-styled “everyday life interiors magazine” based in Milan and Barcelona, invited me to contribute something “to celebrate the fact we were inspired by your words five years ago when we started doing our magazine,” I couldn’t resist.