In Through the Outdoors
If only we could all live this way. Frey Residence in Palm Springs. Photo by Julius Shulman, 1956.
Trends may come and trends may go, but there are two constants that are easy to predict. Every year, as the weather starts to warm, people head outdoors. They sweep their patios, pull out the garden furniture, and start hosting events al fresco. Then, like clockwork, as the days get shorter and the nights get crisper, the opposite happens. People build their indoor nests, look for furnishings and textiles that evoke warmth, and begin to imagine winter evenings with hot cocoa and pumpkin spice.
Given this cycle, coupled with the pandemic’s early and continuing push toward outdoor events, it should not have come as any surprise that Milan showcased A LOT of outdoor furnishings at Salone in April. What is a surprise is just how much the distinction between outdoor and indoor is becoming increasingly blurred.
The concept of indoor/outdoor living is not new to me. It is an ideal originally crystalized through post-war images in magazines like Life and Sunset that glamorized a distinctly California lifestyle. Images by famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman often depicted Eichler and Case Study homes with floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that fully open to sunny patios and atria. Sadly, we don’t all live this way in California. But with near-perfect weather most days of the year, the Golden State still delivers on its indoor/outdoor promise in many other ways.
But what about other places? Despite living in the Bay Area for more than a decade, as a former Northwesterner who grew up with multiple consecutive days (weeks… months…) of bone-chilling rain, I get why the idea of living outside year-round may not work for all. So why not bring the outdoors in?
Outside In
Outside In takes a lot of clues from biophilic design but interprets nature through radically different lenses. Like the former, the trend aims to reap some of the benefits nature offers to our mental and emotional health through the use of natural elements in our built environments. But the two concepts differ in how to do this. Where biophilic design focuses on natural elements that have contributed to our evolutionary survival, Outside In does not limit itself to such literal definitions of nature, nor does it stick to notions of realism. Rather, it often incorporates elements of fantasy, abstraction, or facsimile.
Further, though Outside In is also related to the current trends in outdoor living, it flips the narrative. It recognizes that the extreme weather and environmental disasters of climate change can make our backyards inhabitable, so it looks to create a natural world free from such headaches. In short, it attempts to soothe eco-anxiety by depicting nature as how we wish to experience it—all from the comfort of our climate-controlled living rooms.
In my next couple of posts, I’ll be looking at specific examples of the Outside In trend, as well as some opportunities the trend presents for forward-thinking brands.
