“The Beauty of Everyday Things”: Exhibitions in Establishing a New Aesthetics of the Architectural and Spatial Environment in Sweden

The article reveals the role of decorative art and architecture exhibitions that took place in Sweden during 1914–1930 in the creation of the Swedish ideology of “design of everyday things” and the establishment of functionalism as the dominant style in modernization of the architectural and spatial environment and, in general, a new way of life. The author of the article carefully traces the history of art and industrial exhibitions in Sweden and analyses their significance. Particular attention is paid to the activities of the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design, as well as to the work of architects E.G Asplund and S. Lewerentz, who organized the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930. An important socio-cultural result of the study is the statement that holding regular exhibitions was one of the main means of educating Swedish society and introducing all of its social classes to the principles of the design approach to making home and building the subject-spatial environment of the surrounding world.