Want to know the future? Look at the past!

Want to know the future? Look at the past! That’s the basic idea behind our Home Futures exhibition. We’ve brought together lots of visionary, daft and innovative projects from the last century – some of them eerily topical even today.

The Home Futures exhibition focuses on what our vision of the future home has been historically. Architects and designers of the 20th century saw the home as a testing ground. Some of their projects have come to fruition, but some of the crazier experiments never went any further.

A red, mouth-like Bocca sofa standing in front of the silhouette of a person and a wall made from windows. — The Bocca sofa was created by Studio 65, according to an original design by Salvador Dalí.

A beige fake fur cover looking like a pouffe, used to cover up a WiFi router. — Bridie Picots home router The Hairy Thing.

A light pink mattress in a bed frame made from wooden planks nailed together in a rustic DIY style with a random look. — Enzo Mari’s furniture was intended to be so simple that anybody could put it together.

A green coat rack named “Cactus”, shaped like a stylised cactus made from soft yet sturdy polyurethane. — Gufram’s Cactus, the coat rack that’s a cactus – or is it the other way around?

A green, semi-inflated sofa from the IKEA a.i.r collection and one unit of the inflated interior resembling a giant ice cube. — Can a full-size sofa be transported in a flat pack? We tried it in the 1980s with our inflatable collection, IKEA a.i.r.

In the 1960s, we began to dream about a connected lifestyle. With the advent of WiFi, smartphones and apps, many of our science fiction fantasies have become a reality. How has that influenced us as human beings, for better or worse?

Five photo posters: “There’s no place like home”, “Compact living”, “Nomadic living”, “Do it yourself” and “Smart living”.

A design sculpture called “Electro-Draught Excluder” made from red, conductive foam shaped as one hundred small pyramids. — Design duo Dunne & Raby’s Electro-Draught Excluder, which is supposed to be able to clear a home of electromagnetic fields.

A rounded, red foam armchair called “Up” resembling an ancient fertility goddess, and a ball. — Gaetano Pesce’s foam furniture swelled up to its full shape only after unpacking.

A closeup of the “Pratone” armchair consisting of a square of giant, green grass straws made from soft yet sturdy polyurethane. — Gufram’s Pratone armchair turns the home into a verdant landscape.

At IKEA, we always have one foot in the past and one in the future. We use research to try to predict what needs people will have five, ten or even fifty years into the future. The Home Futures exhibition is part of this, and is presented in association with Design Museum London.

White walls, photo posters and “ENTER” in large writing on the beige stone floor of the entrance to IKEA Museum.