The “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” 2019

Truly Truly have developed a concept of a home that is flexible enough to adapt to changing life rhythms and to offer its residents spaces for different moods. ‘Das Haus’ 2019 transforms the home into an inspiring place for a conscious experience of individuality and community – far away from the hectic routine of life. Assembled from a small number of elements, rendered in just a few colours and then enveloped in textiles, ‘Das Haus’ will draw in visitors at imm cologne 2019 with glimpses through its soft, partially open shell.

The design by Rotterdam design studio Truly Truly radiates like the light glowing from the cut-out windows of a lantern. With its intricate outer shell, its carefully chosen colours and structures, it’s possible to discern the minds of graphic artists at work in this version of ‘Das Haus’. It’s modern, delicate, stylish – shrouded in mystery from the outside behind curtains of fabric in camouflage-like patterns and from the inside, a lavish yet enigmatic jewel. What, for example, lies hidden behind this wall of plants? Where is the seating area (there are several)? Is this the kitchen? And why do the kitchen units look so solidly built? (Lava stone tiles give them the appearance of weight.) Is that a dining table or a desk (it’s both)? Private areas alternate with public ones, with exciting viewing angles opening up everywhere. The rooms merge into one another, their function is hinted at rather than dictated by the furniture. The tactile properties of many of the materials and textiles radiate warmth. The colours are also emotionally motivated. Only the bathroom and bedroom appear slightly set apart. There is no courtyard and no garden, only spaces whose atmospheres carry away the visitor and invite him or her to contemplate the functions of our living environments.

For Truly Truly, the centre of the home is the kitchen, fashioned in polished stainless steel and gleaming tiles, whose unfamiliar forms invite you to reorganise your workflows: washing, preparing, cooking, serving – sometimes the functions are separate, sometimes combined. The refrigerator and cupboards disappear into a wall unit. A bench forming several seating levels leads across into a quiet corner, and the sink unit also protrudes far into the room. The Australian couple do not seem to have imagined a fitted kitchen and have rather thrown out the kitchen design rulebook. Quiet zones, private areas and seating options – some solitary, some grouped together – alternate with plenty of open space and room dividers, which only appear randomly distributed at first glance. Objets d’art and fabrics, rugs and lamps complete the appearance of ‘Das Haus’ as a well-thoughtout, complete artistic concept.

It’s not its functions that characterise a room, but rather its atmosphere. The rooms create a certain mood so that the residents of the house are always able to find the right place to suit what they want to do at that moment – in accordance with their mood and the rhythm of their lives. Even though the rhythms of people’s lives are taking ever more individual forms, the kitchen remains the centre of the home – the place where people come together. And since the home is becoming the antithesis of an ever faster paced life, ‘Das Haus’ by Truly Truly aims to be a space in which you can remove the rapid tempo from your life – a place where you can shift into a lower gear.

Truly Truly’s ‘Das Haus’ looks for forms offering a new way of living in which rooms signify freedom rather than fixed delineation. Spaces and furnishings are multifunctional – the large dining table with its few chairs is available for various activities; at the sink counter, it’s also possible to have a coffee, and the upholstered furniture doesn’t always dictate an explicit seating direction either. Only those areas intended for relaxation and privacy have a more distinct appearance: the low-backed armchair, the table half obscured behind a wall of plants, the sleeping area. There are four zones: ‘Reclusive’, ‘Serene’, ‘Active’ and ‘Reclining’, but they are not separated by walls, instead merging into one another. The contemporary home imagined by Kate and Joel Booy can thus be said to have a natural, organic flow. Living, working, sleeping or relaxing – the camouflage pattern on the curtains is a metaphor for an organic living concept in which anything is possible, in any space. Nothing is explicitly coded, there are double meanings, cross references, sensory associations. Domestic items transform into abstract symbols in a cloze text in which the gaps have been left for the visitor to fill in.