Habitat's Scenographic Imagination

摘要

Habitat, the furniture and household goods retail chain, has been characterized as showing an 'eclectic' approach towards design styles and promoting a 'lifestyle' attitude towards domestic interiors. In an attempt to fill out these two terms and to explore the elusive (and allusive) content of Habitat's eclectic lifestyle this article analyses the domestic scenography presented in three arenas of display that can be seen as being authored by Habitat: the shops themselves; the annual catalogues; and the advice books that were published under the authorship of Terence Conran and promoted and sold by Habitat (although also available more widely). I suggest that one way of recognizing the affective content of Habitat's scenographic imagination is to regard it as constituting a genre that incorporates variety yet also mobilizes a particular set of domestic promises.