PHENOMENON OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS IN POST-WAR PERIOD AND INTERIOR DESIGN BY CREATIVE CHOICE: BANHAM, SMITHSON AND ART OF INHABITATION

Abstract

In "Design by Choice" (1961), Reyner Banham reflected on the role of architects in the new visual environment of objects. Faced with uncontrollable industrial productions, post-war architects were losing their traditional role of "total designers". Banham evoked Le Corbusier's exercise of "creative choice" with example of the Esprit Nouveau Pavillon (1925). Here, the architect refused to design domestic objects and tried to impose the " background control over the choice of others".Banham was also interested in Alison and Peter Smithson's " Art of Inhabitation", domonstrated by their two exhibitions with two artists, Nigel Henderson and Edouardo Paolozzi. Parallel of Life and Art (1953) exhibited the accumulation of unusual images from real life and created an unexpected perception of the exhibition room. In Patio and Pavilion (1956), the architects were concerned only with pavilion construction inside the room, and assigned the artists to arrange the objects. It was the artists who completely renewed the space, as if inhabitants personalized inside of the new habitat.The Smithsons were influenced by the Eames House (1949) through the media. The photo of the living room of the American furniture designer couple, published several times in the Smithsons' writings, showed a house not "for living in" but "already lived", and presented mise-en-scne of an ordinary life from American advertisements or films. The Smithsons also compared the interior of the Eames with that of Le Corbusier. The Eames House was far from the aesthetics of the architect-painter, but closer to that of a "layout man" of cinema. The arrangement of the objects by the Eames looked instantaneous and changeable, unlike the composition in a Purist still life.According to the Smithsons, the attitude of the Eames could be translated into a strategy they called the "Select and Arrange", almost similar to their "Art of Inhabitation". The "Select and Arrange" is close to the everyday acts of popular people: "flower arrangement", "furnishing", or " apples on a plates" at breakfast. The domestic scene becomes spontaneous arrangement of objects "without rhetoic" and is completely left to the hands of real inhabitants.The "Art of Inhabitation" continues to this day : based on the hypothesis that the separation between objects-contained and architecture-container will be more evident, architecture seeks neutrality of plan. However, it is not impossible to bridge this rupture between objects and architecture : Examplary strategies are : AutoConstruction "without architects" but by inhabitants; Architects's Baukunst(art of building) from ready-made elements in industrial catalogs. The art of inhabitant influences the art of architect. Nevertheless, choice and arrangement must remain "adventurous" beyond functional and aesthetic conventions.