Modelling Modular Living: Furniture and Life magazine and interior design in 1980s China

Abstract In 1981, Furniture and Life magazine commenced publication in the city of Xi'an in the People’s Republic of China. By the late 1980s, it had become a well-known furniture and home-making magazine, read for its DIY guides, advice columns, and home stories. Each issue discussed how to beautify homes and turn the Chinese Communist Party’s vision for a ‘socialist material civilization’ into practice and lived experience. This article uses the case of Furniture and Life to chart the role of modular furniture in urban interior design and the cultural imagination of the 1980s, the first decade of the CCP’s economic reforms following the end of the Cultural Revolution. It traces the context in which the magazine was established, illustrating why furniture had become a pressing concern for many people across the country. It then shows how editors, themselves often architects, furniture designers, and engineers, focused on modular, ‘board-style’ furniture to solve people’s concrete problems of small living spaces and a growing desire for personal space. In this process, the magazine editors connected modular furniture and interiors to the CCP’s vision of socialist material and spiritual civilization, thus trying to lend concrete shape to broad political concepts.