In the last few years, the boundaries between interior decoration, art, and design have begun to blur. Within this trend, each discipline contributes its own unique qualities. This direction has resulted in a combination of presenting individual artistic vision and adjusting to the demands of the market. One can describe this phenomenon as a kind of product-building exchange between the senders and the recipients - for which, in our case, the model rooms serve as the means of communication.

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The history of Viennese model rooms goes back several centuries. The beginnings of example-setting ideal spaces were already emerging in the second half of the seventeenth century. The first attempts focused on the careful selection of materials, then furnishings were added gradually, such as furniture and lighting. Industrial development, economic progress, and improved quality of living cleared the way for individual expression. more »

In 1908, Adolf Loos published a polemic modern architecture pamphlet titled “Ornament and Crime”. Ornamentation, he argues, is redundant, cost-intensive kitschy decoration, and an expression of the cultural backwardness which can be found in primitive cultures, and which is not representative of modern man. “The barbarian era,” the architect concludes, “is finally past.”

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Only a few years later, Siegfried Kracauer showed that even the modern era, which strives for practicality and rationalization, produces ornaments on its surface. He argues that these ornamentations are an expression of modern mass society, visual representations of modern life and its realities. The ornamentation is not taken into consideration by the masses who produce it. It develops without their knowledge. They do not produce it consciously or on purpose, which is why it resembles “the aerial shots of landscapes and cities”, in which patterns only emerge for the distant viewer. more »