Other influences, too, were at work. The hippy look had become mainstream and even drug culture was widely accepted. In 1970, the highly respectable London department store Maples launched an exhibition entitled "Experiments in Living." A project on display, the "Trip Box" by Alex MacIntyre used music and back-projection to create a hallucinatory environment – not dissimilar to the transcendental experience induced by Martin Dean’s "The Retreat Pod" in the late 1960s, which mimicked the effect of a sensory-deprivation tank.
The late 1960s had been characterized by an "alternative" youth culture. Many young people turned against technology and rejected established Western values, including conventional homes and jobs, in favor of a more nomadic lifestyle. As a result, tents, camper vans, and caravans became preferable anti-establishment abodes for many young people. Whereas in the 1960s interior design had been fun and revolutionary in style but not in substance, in the 1970s homes became self-conscious political statements, as described in the well-thumbed 1972 almanac Underground Interiors: Decorating for Alternative Lifestyles. The West began to be "ethnicized" and artifacts from Third World countries became commonplace in decorating schemes. Natural fibers, patterned textiles, and candlelight were mainstays of the politically aware home. "Organic" now referred to "natural", not to "biomorphic", as it had in the first half of the century.
The mainstream acceptance and success of hippy chic and the return to nature was aided, certainly in London, by one individual, Terence Conran. Having already influenced 1960s interior design by creating Mary Quant’s Knightsbridge shop in 1957, which featured bales of fabric as a ceiling treatment and a central staircase where clothes hung underneath, Conran opened his first Habitat store in London in May 1964. His intention was to sell "good" simple design to the mass market at a reasonable cost and to import inexpensive ethnic items.
The plain white painted walls and brown quarry-tiled floor of Conran’s store were influential to store and home design, and featured goods with a similar, natural sensibility, such as beech furniture terracotta, and rush matting. Items were displayed en masse to give a warehouse feel. In the 1970s the rest of the world finally caught on, but by then Conran was moving ahead. He had marketed re-edition classic chairs from the Modern Movement in the mid-1960s, and now showed his forward-thinking capabilities by introducing an all-black "Hi-Tech" range, which became more refined in the 1980s and, in turn, the precursor of 1990s minimalism.
With Hi-Tech, the homes became more akin to the workplace. Factory kit shelving, metal flooring, and perforated metal staircases and filing cabinets became commonplace in the living environment, indicating changes in attitude toward the office and home. For a woman with a career, the Hi-Tech style suggested a functioning and highly efficient home.
Not unlike Le Corbusier in 1925, architects celebrated the aesthetic of industry and brought back the "bare bones" once again into interior design. Architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano played crucial roles in the formulation of the style when, in partnership, they designed the first public building adhering to Hi-Tech qualities – the Pompidou Center in Paris (1977). The interior of his national arts museum and cultural center exists as a vast shed or warehouse. The apparatus for servicing the building is brazenly positioned on the exterior, and at many points is not even visually attached.
One major player in American Hi-Tech was the designer Joseph Paul D’Urso. Apart from his significant contributions to retail and commercial design – he designed showrooms for Calvin Klein in the late 1970s – Joe D’Urso committed his own New York apartment to the treatment. He added hospital doors, steel-mesh fencing for clothes and storage, as well as stainless steel surgeons’ sinks. As he remarked in an interview at Parsons School of Design in 1982: "The objects I use are not industrial so much as they are simply designed without arbitrary decoration. They are not trying to be styled elements – just basic straightforward designs."
In France other designers were finding their styles emulated worldwide. Andrée Putman and Ronald Cécil Sportes had a more technical approach, while François Catroux and Alberto Pinto created with luxuriousness in mind. In Italy the focus was on refining a Post-International style using innovative materials. It was the furniture designers that were at the forefront following New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" in 1972, which showcased micro-environments that had been commissioned by leading avant-garde and radical designers Mario Bellini, Joe Colombo, and Ettore Sottsass. Colombo’s "Total Furnishing Unit" took the form of a self-contained block comprising four separate units to cater to all needs: eating, sleeping, bathing, and storage. Day and night furniture could be pulled out as desired. Sottass and Colombo designed highly flexible modules, which connected and disconnected for various functions. Sottsass joined Alessandro Mendini’s Studio Alchimia group, formed in 1979, but soon left to set up the Memphis group, which became the lively backbone of residential and commercial design in the 1980s.
In America in 1974, designer Don Chadwick produced the "Chadwick Modular Seating" for Herman Miller, where various units linked together in a continuous, undulating row. The characteristic setting it apart from other modular seating is the deep fold where the seat and back meet, which can be bent into a serpent curve or to fit into a curved niche.
Acquiring a "Nonstop" or "Chadwick" system may prove difficult and expensive, and it is unlikely to fit your prescribed space, but it is possible to draw from their design and details. Consider fitting furniture to line walls, and take note on the fabrics and colors used. Brown, tan, red, beige, aubergine, and sometimes dull greens and ochre-based yellows, are characteristic of the 1970s, but only details of black are used.
Walls were plain, either painted ecru or stark white, and often glossy or textured, or partially covered with fabric panels, mirrors, or metallic sheets. Cork, bamboo, and basket were popular for walls in kitchens and less formal areas. Green leafy plants engulfed entire corners. Bathroom furniture, baths, and bidets came in browns and greens, including the ubiquitous avocado suite. The word "fitted" described everything, from carpets and bed linen to closets.
Open-plan space was still in vogue, affording more light to the home. Mezzanines had become the less-complicated dais or platform, where a simple divan bed or low seating affair re-apportioned the interior space. Conversation pits became less recessed, less secretive, and more at ground level – the accent being on the raised platform.
Geometric pattern as art or textile design accents an otherwise plain interior in the 1970s scheme. Heavy painted wavy stripes can work as permanent art on walls and visually alter a space. Use spot, track, and recessed lights to support minimal floor and table lamps, with fashionable options being neon or fiber-optic. Fur and deep-pile carpets bring a saucier "playboy" or "Hollywood" touch to the scene.
Paneling continued as a popular feature but was often replaced with tiling. In the latter half of the 20th century, the tile rose to prominence yet again, as it did in the 19th century, when home-builders and developers in Florida and the Southwest United States found the tile useful for their hot climates. In more inclement regions, wipe-down tiles are perfect for a patio, a lanai, or an outdoor barbecue, as well as for bathrooms and kitchens. The tiled effect also adds to the geometry of patterned areas.
Although ceramic and vinyl tile dados are commonplace in more functional 1970s rooms, such as hallways and recreation rooms, they can also be effectively employed elsewhere. The designer Ellen Lehman McCluskey, for example, successfully used a dado of grey vinyl tiles in a 1960s dining-room scheme. Ceramic or vinyl tiles laid in a pattern on a floor can be continued up the walls as a dado, or the tiles can be used on just one wall. Even a single wall of tiles gives a great lift to a room. The contrast between a sparkling tiled wall and three painted plaster walls is a superb device for redirecting the focus of the room or for providing an accent of interest. A wall or two of gloss paint in a room can achieve the same effect.