10 ★ FTWeekend 21 March/22 March 2020T
he nation was not prepared
for the shut-in life. For the
longest time, home has
been a place to return to, a
sanctum with a front door
to separate ourselves from everything
else outside. In a few short weeks, in
many parts of the world, coronavirus
has confined millions of people to their
homes. Almost overnight, the sanc-
tum has been transformed
into something else, or
into many things: an
office, gym, playground
and holding cell. hereT
has hardly been a more fit-
ting time to ask: what,
exactly,does“home”mean?
Sonia Solicari as beenh
preoccupied with the
question of what makes a
home since 2017, when she
became the director ofthe
Museum of the Home in east London.
Formerly the Geffrye Museum,the
buildings that house the reimagined
museum are in the middle of an
£18.1m renovation.
For Solicari, home starts “with an ele-
ment of bricks and mortar. Butthen we
immediatelyblowthatapart.”Domestic
life is something the museum curators
see as universally relevant but also so
nebulous and personal that it cannot be
described by simply rehashing the his-
to ry of its associated objects.“Home is
basically a feeling. That’s the closest we
gettodefiningit,”Solicarisays.
By the time the museum reopens
this autumn, it will have80 per centmore space, with two new wings, a
new café, refurbished attics and exca-
vated basements beneathits Grade
I-listed buildings.
Those buildings are a knocked-
through horseshoe-shaped block of
almshouses — a medieval form of
social housing that was built in 1714—
by the Ironmongers’ Company at the
bequest of the former mayor of
London and master of the
company, Sir Richard
Geffrye. The alm-
shouses accommo-
dated etired iron-r
mongers for 200
years.
In 1914 the buildings were
saved from demolition and
turned into a museum of
furniture, dedicated to the
furniture-making industry
that once flourished in
Hackney, where the museum is
located. It became the Geffrye
Museum of the Home in 2011.
Although the refurbished museum
will contain furniture, its emphasis will
not be onthe history of interior design,
but on its lived experience. Solicari
worked previously at theVictoria and
Albert Museum, which also focuses on
design. How does the Museum of the
Home’s approach differ? “Design is
important but it has to be lived,” says
Solicari. “It’s about what happens to
thatbedwhenitleavestheshowroom.”
In the museum’s previous life, visi-
tors werecorralled through a linear
chronological tour of reconstructedinteriors in thealmshouses, decorated
to reflect the tastes and technologies
of different eras. The earliest was
from 1600, the latest a loft space from
1998 — contemporary when it was
installed, but the early Dyson vacuumwith new sorts of events, ncluding com-i
munity-based activities and festivals on
the lawns encircled by the almshouse
buildings, which have attracted a
youngeraudience.
One of theproblems with the old
museum that triggered the overhaul
was its relentless focus on a pecifics
subject: the lives of the British middleclass. “We were aware that those
rooms aren’t everyone’s experience of
a home,” says Solicari.
The curators have operated a pro-
grammecalled Documenting Homes
since 2007, where individuals are pho-
tographed where they live and inter-The Museum
of the Home,
formerly the
Geffrye
museum,
is being
refurbished to
the tune of
£18m; (left) the
new entrance
opposite Hoxton
Underground
Station Jayne Lloyd—What makes
a home?
Interiors That is the question at the heart of|
the Museum of the Home — especially during these
roubling, housebound times. Byt Lucy Watson
House Home
A 1960s telephonecleaner, laminate flooring and lime-
green bed sheets seem less so now.
When the museum reopens there will
be two main entrances, a choice of
routes and, although the period rooms
will be reinstated, they will not be inchronological order. It will be “dip-in
anddive-incontent”,Solicarisays.
Some of the new displays will
include multisensory elements, with
sounds and mells — well contained —s
such as liquid from the gallbladder of
cows that was used for cleaning
carpets; or isinglass, a clothes starch
made from the swim bladders of fish.
This was the element that most
excited people during user testing,
according to Solicari: “People love
daring themselves to smell something
potentially horrendous.” The
museum is predicting a rise in annual
visitors, from 120,000 pre-closure
to 170,000.
There will also bea revamped
Museum of the Home website,updated
asanever-evolvingexhibitionbycollab-
orationwithcurators,suchastheYoung
Producers — a group of teens who are
working to create a “digital trail”
throughthemuseum’sexhibits.The clo-
surehasallowedcuratorstoexperimentAlmost overnight, our
sanctum has been
transformed into an office,playground, holding cell
MARCH 21 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 18/3/2020- 18:32 User:rosalind.sykes Page Name:RES10, Part,Page,Edition:RES, 10, 1