Each year IMM Cologne invites a leading international designer to forget reality and come up with an idealized home that fulfills their vision of domestic bliss. The final concept is then realized and installed on a 180-square-metre platform during the run of the fair, which in 2014 takes place from January 13 to 19.
Danish designer Louis Campbell is this year’s Das Haus visionary, and earlier this month she revealed some of the key features that will define her planned abode. These include dining tables long enough for 40 guests to enjoy a communal meal and over-sized beds presented as singular features within rooms.
According to Campbell, the house will be generously equipped to encourage us to do two things we already do at home more than anywhere else: eat and sleep. “The bed,” she says, is her favourite object, because “it’s the most comfortable piece of furniture there is, so I’m using it as madly as I can.
“I want the house to have the feeling of being at home, where restlessness disappears and comfort takes its place.”
Named 0-100 (Made to Measure), the house will also offer its fictional residents an endless array of tools, from basic cooking implements to simple devices for tailoring or operating a lab, or for inventing and building completely new things.
“It’s all low-tech,” notes Campbell. There won’t be room made for things like surround sound systems or giant flat screens. You’ll have to move your body in order to reach for things.”
Since graduating from the Danish Design School in 1995, Campbell has created furniture and lighting for such stellar brands as Zanotta, HAY, Muuto, and Stelton.