The temporary exhibition for the IKEA Museum in Älmhult is based on the documentary film Human Shelter by Boris B. Bertram. The film questions the nature of home and how we inhabit spaces according to our cultural and social economic background.
The design encourages the audience to reflect on what is home for them through a spatial path of seven selected hotspots and megatrends across the world. Spaces and rooms are presented as 1:1 life-scale interpretations of the film through drawn lines mapped out on floor, walls and fabric screens that give the impression of scale. The audience are invited into a 7m2 Tokyo apartment mapped out on the floor through to a caravan owned by reindeer herders in Northern Norway. The series of installations are representative of the chapters in the film and contain further stories, films and imagery from each of the unique locations and living situations. Through a spatial experience that responds to the body, the audience are led through the seven principle spaces through to a unique viewing of the full ‘Human Shelter’ film.
With a clean, stripped back and robust material palette that let the colours and imagery from the film define the space, material inspiration draws from the aesthetic of the ‘Better Shelter’ refugee shelter featured in the film. Surfaces become fabric walls that allow for transparent surface projections with soundbites and imagery that elaborate further on stories and off-cuts from the film in a cohesive journey into questioning what makes a home.
