this short text was published by Architectural Deisgn, Vol 72 No 4, entitled Furniture + Architecture guest-edited by Edwin Heathcote, July 2002

Look at me, look at me, look at me

It was the design historian Reyner Banham who coined the phrase ‘furniturization’. He was writing in the seminal catalogue for Modern Chairs 1918-1970 an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the summer of 1970. Banham evolved the term furniturization to describe a change that he recognized in the material world. A change in how previously unselfconscious and virtually invisible domestic artifacts –essentially the bibelot of everyday life, chairs, taps, cruets, etc- had suddenly become great design objects that demanded attention.  Previously humble things were growing vast promotional superstructures that meshed beautifully with the rise of a culture of retail, celebrity and promotion.