This magazine is one of four print issues of Vitra’s e-magazine, which were published digitally in the summer of 2020. The magazines are the concept of Vitra CEO Nora Fehlbaum and contain suggestions for new ways of designing offices and domestic interiors in light of the health concerns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Claiming that the pandemic has ‘fundamentally altered the way we work’, each issue focuses on a different aspect of the changing workplace. Working between disciplines, Vitra leveraged their network of scientists and designers to help inform their design decisions based on empirical evidence from research in public and personal health. Collectively, all four issues contain valuable information on workplace design and serve as a bellwether to the lasting changes in work in a post-pandemic society. 

Issue 04, ‘New Dynamics in the Home’, focuses on the domestic space on the assumption that ‘remote working is here to stay’. Citing the productivity benefits of remote working, while also being honest about the psychological challenges, Vitra provides suggestions on arranging home offices, kitchens and outdoor spaces that can ‘accommodate more aspects of our lives’. According to Vitra, these ‘Homes of Tomorrow’ will contain hybrid kitchens, home offices, home learning, indoor and outdoor living settings. They further note the rise in popularity of outdoor furniture and discuss how interior spaces can be altered to bring in more of the outside. The issue also contains four essays around ‘thoughts on the future of homes’ by Kyle Chayka, Ilse Crawford, Beatriz Colomina and Catherine Prouvé; which discuss modernism and the fear of disease, homes with ‘limited but adequate’ space, our new appreciation for the home and the evolution of the bed as a place of work.