LACMA’s new book and exhibition tackle our ongoing fascination with domestic futurism

Liberated by the machine or trapped by technology? That’s the dichotomy at the heart of a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ‘Home of the Future, 1925 - 1985: Designing Domestic Utopias’, a panoply of visions of the future of labour-saving devices and the push-button era that always seemed to be just around the corner.

The exhibition is accompanied by this handsome volume from DelMonico Books, edited by Wendy Kaplan, who heads up the museum’s Decorative Arts and Design department. It’s a fertile subject for research, not just because those promises don’t seem to have gone away, but also because the vividly rendered future visions conjured up during the era in question have gone on to be so influential, even if the technologies they promised never turned out quite right.

Look inside House of the Future

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Modern society always seems on the cusp of a domestic tech revolution, and while the consumer family of 1950 would be shocked and awed by the voice-activated home of today, we’re still waiting for our robot butlers, flying cars, and – perhaps most importantly of all – the endless hours of leisure, personal growth and social interaction promised by liberating technology.

The book, also titled Home of the Future 1925 - 1985: Designing Domestic Utopias, brings together the exhibits, imagery and analysis in a tome designed by Lorraine Wild and Xiaoqing Wang of Green Dragon Office. It’s a cornucopia of future-facing innovations and retro-futuristic optimism, some of which has come to pass (the robotic cleaner) and some of which remains mired in the marshes of impracticality (the flying car).

Whether it was high flying fantasies about a new life in space or simply a family house that was a true machine for living in, advertisers, manufacturers, futurists, optimists and even toymakers all got in on the act. The future was coming, and coming fast.

The benefit of hindsight lends an air of tragic kitsch to much of this material, but these were simpler times when technology’s curative potential wasn’t yet diverted or tainted. Loosely covering the six decades between 1925 and 1985, Home of the Future is a fine accompaniment to a show full of treasures, elevated from domestic banality by faith, wonder and optimism.

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Frank G. Brotz for Kohler Co., Electric Sink, introduced 1926 (this example 1928)

American Stove Company, Magic Chef stove, introduced 1935

George R. Lum for Western Electric Company, Telephone, 1938

Ideal Toy Company, Sid Noble, Robert the Robot, 1954

John (Jack) W. Ryan, Ralph Dunn, Mattel, Inc., Jeff Long action figure, 1969

Eero Aarnio, Asko, Ball Chair, designed 1963

Frank Gehry, The Bubbles Lounge Chair, 1987

As the mood turned, first via newly minted criticisms of rampant consumption and then via the nascent ecological movement, the shiny visions of the future were retrofitted to suit a more sustainable, attainable target.

The first three sections of the book look to the sunlit uplands, while the fourth and final part, The Counterculture and the computer, assesses what happened after the clouds rolled in and more conscious and considered ways of living were explored.

The shape of the home and the objects within it generate debates that’ll run for ever. Future generations will no doubt look back at the first quarter of the 21st century and see similar patterns – explosions of hope followed by misdirection, confusion and despair.

Perhaps we’re ripe for a countercultural pushback against the ubiquitous digital ‘domestic utopia’ we’ve all found ourselves inadvertently trapped in; Home of the Future is a good place to start exploring.

The book, Home of the Future 1925-1985: Designing Domestic Utopias, edited by Wendy Kaplan, DelMonico Books, $79.95, DelMonicoBooks.com, artbook.com,

The exhibition runs from 27 September 2026 to 14 March 2027 at LACMA's Resnick Pavilion, LACMA.org