American and British exhibitions of town planning, dwellings, and home furnishings proliferated during World War II as architects seized an opportunity to rethink housing on a mass scale. “Tomorrow on Display” analyzes a range of these displays to illuminate how wartime planning and modern architecture were inextricably intertwined. The dissertation demonstrates how concepts such as the neighborhood unit and the production of modern dwellings were spurred by the war as architects in the U.S. and Britain envisioned more egalitarian forms of living. But it also illustrates how architects, curators, and institutions promoted such concepts, visualizing postwar housing for non-professional audiences by connecting architectural designs to ideas about democracy during and following the war. As “Tomorrow on Display” shows, with men enlisted in the conflict, many of these new curators and museum personnel were women. Chapter one analyzes the exhibitions Wartime Housing (Museum of Modern Art, 1942) and Rebuilding Britain (Royal Institute of British Architects, 1943) to illustrate how curators framed the war as an opportunity to modernize housing. Chapter two examines Look at Your Neighborhood (MoMA, 1944) and Planning Your Neighborhood (Army Bureau of Current Affairs, 1945) to illuminate the ways in which town-planning displays communicated to visitors the egalitarian potential of the neighborhood unit. Chapter three looks at Integrated Building (MoMA, 1945) and Kitchen Planning (British Gas Industry, 1945) to elucidate how kitchen-planning exhibits encouraged women to think of the postwar future by planning their new homes. Finally, chapter four studies how model housing displays such as Idea House II (Walker Art Center, 1947-48) and 4 Ways of Living (Ministry of Health/Council of Industrial Design, 1949) encouraged postwar audiences to envision themselves living in and furnishing modern homes. Collectively this research reveals how curators and their institutions called upon visitors to advocate, personalize, and consume as democratic duties. Ultimately, the project argues that the exhibitions’ underlying ideological agendas constructed and reinforced a democratic citizenry to combat the totalitarian regimes against which the U.S. and Britain were unified. / 2025-10-31T00:00:00Z

Imagine visiting a housing exhibition so radical and so ground-breaking that it will influence urban planning and housing standards for an entire nation. During the Stockholm Exhibition 1930, around four million people got to experience just that when the ideas of functionalism were presented to the public. The new, modern style ideal sparked great public debate and opinions were divided. Some of the most vocal proponents of functionalism wrote the propaganda text “acceptera” in which they argued that we must break free from the past and must “accept” the new. One of the advocates of the new modernist ideals was Sven Markelius who a few years later presented “Hem I Kollektivhus”, a new domestic concept for the Swedish family inspired by Alva Myrdahls’ socio-political ideas. The proposal was a multi-family house with a shared kitchen, a communal children’s department, and other collective functions with the aim of getting the woman out to work instead of being stuck in the kitchen with household chores. Inspired by the ideas of collective functions as a response to current housing and social issues, the question arises of how we could approach the same thinking in today’s society. The study explores the Swedish housing model and what role housing exhibitions have had on Swedish housing architecture. This thesis proposes a new Swedish housing concept that explores private and collective functions in domestic life and how it fulfils the personal need for space. The proposal includes a double sided, rotating wall as a new tectonic component in the Swedish domestic environment. The rotating walls can be opened and closed on our own premises and provide more space for our personal needs. The possibility of opening and closing rooms with a more periodized system creates new spatial connections. Either as an expansion of the unit, or a room of one’s own isolated from the dwelling. The room of one’s own can function as a home office, a painting workshop, a music studio, or a room for meditation and poetry. What space do you need in your Swedish domesticity?

A Landscape with Furniture. Designs, plans, and buildings of Jan E. Koula (1896-1975) and his notion of a "people's dwelling". Marcela Suchomelová Abstract (EN) The thesis focuses on the professional and personal course of life of a Prague architect, designer, painter, documentarian, teacher, theoretician and editor of specialized magazines on architecture and housing culture in the interwar and the onset war era and in line with the avant-garde thinking. Nowadays, the theoretical and artistic legacy of Jan E. Koula (1896-1975) is seen in his remarkable ability to popularize ethics and aesthetic in the contemporary housing culture, and in his capability of pragmatic characterization, evaluation and promotion of modern style of living. He was very consistent and unceasing in doing so, while having the model of Le Corbusier's functionalist purism in mind. An analysis of the then publications, archival documents and Koula's autobiography allowed us to compare his singular interventions in architecture and design as well as the interior housing or exhibition concepts, not to mention the circumstances of their origin and ideological contribution in the plurality of activities, interests, and the social and cultural background of the period between 1920' and 1940'. Jan E. Koula dealt with the issue of housing...