modern interior. They are portrayed as having unlimited imaginations
and the capacity to change the appearance of the interior with the wave
of a wand. Other programmes approach the domestic interior from
slightly different perspectives. One, for example, builds on the long-
standing fascination of the public with celebrities’ homes, while others
set out to provide information and advice to people who see their homes
as a form of investment which would benefit from the addition of an
enhanced interior.
By the early years of the twenty-first century the idea of ‘lifestyle’
has come to dominate private consumption and, along with fashionable
dress, holidays, leisure activities and private transportation ownership,
the home has become increasingly important in that context. Especially
in its idealized and desired form, home is the place where personal
identities are still formed, for the most part, and the destination for
most consumed goods, from new technology products to furniture and
furnishings. It is not only the goods within interiors that are consumed,
however. Interiors themselves, particularly those in hotels, shopping
malls, supermarkets, restaurants, banks, theme parks, airport lounges,
ocean liners, and other commercially oriented spaces, have themselves
become objects of consumption. As the idea of ‘lifestyle’ became the end
in sight within consumer culture, the role of branding also increased in
significance and interiors were integrated into marketing and branding
strategies.
Increasingly global companies seek to brand themselves through
the language of their interiors as well as through their graphic design.
The experience of a McDonald’s restaurant, of a Hard Rock Café, or of a
Planet Hollywood, is, in any city in the world, a more or less standardized
one. The same principle applies to shops – from Max Mara fashion
stores, to the Body Shop, to Gap, the interiors of which utilize the same
colour schemes and display techniques across the world, to chains of
hotels, such as the Madonna Inn in the us, theme parks and shopping
malls where the same franchised shops appear together in different
venues. In those contexts the interior has become less an extension of
architecture than of graphic design, advertising and branding. The more
standardized mass-produced interiors become however, the greater is the
desire to create ‘difference’ at a higher level of the market through an
open alliance with designer-culture. The luxurious stylishness of the
interiors of French designer Philippe Starck’s New York hotels, for exam-
208 ple – which have a family resemblance but are highly individualized204_212_Modern_Conclusion:Layout 1 30/5/08 18:32 Page 208