Our home, both the location and the physical building itself, influences almost every aspect of our lives – from how well we sleep, to how often we see friends, to how safe and secure we feel. If we want to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities, there can hardly be a more important place to start than the home: it is where most people spend most of their life. Once a site of fundamental social and spatial conventions emancipated from the pressures of the world, the living room is the place for family dinners, the main stage for the lives portrayed on TV sitcoms and the room most often preserved by museums to depict the lives of historic periods.

Has the humble living room changed? What does a living room signify? How does this space unify the lives of displaced people in search of a new home? Does a single room reveal the spatial nature of social networks or the concurrent domestic and professional behaviours of those working from home? 

The living room is also a sanctuary for photographs, displaying images of those who left the house or are away from it, keeping them alive or present. It has also been the creative context for many artists, photographers, designers and writers examining the significance of this domestic space in the context of societal and technological change. The living rooms of the future and its function will depend on the world we are able to imagine ourselves as a society. 

We are looking for anyone interested to participate and hope this collective effort will help us to reflect on the various aspects of this domestic space and help us to imagine a different future. 

As part of this project we will showcase the work of different photographers as well as visual materials from historical collections that have been produced in and about this important domestic space.