Preparing for the Year 2000

In the not too distant future, the earth will teem with 6 billion inhabitants (v. 3.4 billion today). And if the industrial designers' gloomier prophecies are correct, the scene is hardly worth waiting for. As a warning of what the year 2000 might be like, Milan's 14th Triennale of Decorative Arts and Industrial Design first shocks its visitors with a scary picture of a littered and dehumanized world. A barricade of abandoned appliances--TV sets, washing machines, dishwashers and refrigerators--bars the entrance to a main salon. Dismembered traffic lights blink bleakly up a staircase strewn with yesterday's newspapers and the hulk of an abandoned car. But there is one note of hope. "Tech-no-lo-gy," proclaims a computerized recording in metallic monosyllables, "is the salvation of the wo-o-or-ld."

Blow Up. Maybe. At any rate, for most designers represented at the exhibit, salvation in the future will require finding a few square yards of empty space that can be called one's own. How to make the most of cramped quarters is the Triennale's theme, and designers from 14 nations have contributed their solutions.

The Russians, led by Architect Alexei Albrasovic Gutnov, suggest circles of communal apartments laid out around a recreation center and tiered in pueblo fashion so that the roof of one apartment would be the garden for the apartment above. France's Quasar Khahn (TIME, May 10) sets up his new inflatable seaside house that stows away in two outsize suitcases, can be blown up with a bicycle pump in 20 minutes. The house comes equipped with transparent blow-up beds, chairs, lamps and even inflatable sculpture. Cinemas in the future, other designers suggest, will come with seats shaped like half an eggshell that will allow moviegoers to curl up and go to sleep if the feature is too dull. For listening in public or at home, each music lover will have his individual transparent audio helmet; it will fit over the head like a diving bell, allow each person to tune in to his selection without disturbing his neighbor.

Magnetic Pre-Fab. Somewhat more to the point is Italian Designer Lorenzo Forges Davanzati of Milan, who has planned the interior of a "total homestead," a room about 19 ft. by 19 ft. that he calculates will be the minimum space for survival for a family of two in the crowded future. In the center of the room, Davanzati places a fixed cabinet containing toilet, shower, washbasin, air-conditioning unit and lighting source. All other furnishings are mobile and foldable, allowing the remaining space to serve triple duty as bedroom, dining room and living room.

Rome's Joe Colombo carries out the same principle by furnishing his interior with blocklike boxes that can be interchanged and attached to each other by magnets. Each box in Colombo's "mono-home" is multipurpose, can serve to house a TV or to store kitchen utensils. "A bachelor buys some of these pieces for his home," Colombo explains. "He marries and he adds more pieces; he has children and he adds more pieces--it goes upward, sideways, inward and downward." An unexpected guest arrives? Easy, says he: "You just pull out an extra bed, assemble it, and stick it to one of the boxes." In fact, Colombo's design may not even be futuristic any more. An Italian manufacturer plans to put his mono-home into production before the end of the year. Sale price for a basic one-room unit: $1,500.

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