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Livingetc’s new “The Meaning of Home” series examines how social media has made domestic spaces both places to live and images for public audiences. The report draws on architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras and the Berlin-based creative duo The Berlin Chapters, while leaving open how much online visual culture changes people’s choices at home.
Livingetc has launched “The Meaning of Home,” a series about the cultural forces shaping domestic life, with an opening report on how social media makes houses both places to live and spaces presented to an audience. The report examines the tension between designing a home for everyday use and arranging it to look compelling in images, drawing on architect and academic Javier Fernández Contreras and the creative duo The Berlin Chapters.
The report argues that domestic spaces have long communicated identity, status and aspiration, but social platforms have expanded their potential audience. A home can now function at once as a residence and as a backdrop, portfolio or gallery. Livingetc frames this as a shift in what people may expect a home to do, rather than simply a change in decorating styles.
Fernández Contreras, author of The Interiors of Social Media: Architecture, Space, and Technology in the 21st Century, says platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Twitch and Pinterest circulate more than room ideas. He argues they can produce “aspirational futures” and change how people judge their own surroundings, making the home a “container for visual representation.” These are his interpretations of social media’s cultural influence, not findings from a quantified study in the supplied report.
The report says the pandemic accelerated the visibility of home life as people worked and broadcast from domestic spaces. Bookshelves became video-call backdrops, kitchen islands could serve as studios, and renovation projects could be published in episodes. But the Berlin Chapters say online exposure does not make their home feel like a set in daily life. They describe it as “our home first” and say practical content concerns are more about light and weather than about furniture.
When Living Spaces Become Public Images
The tension matters because a home must support ordinary needs while also carrying visual meaning for people who may encounter it online. The report suggests that a constant stream of polished interiors can shape expectations and comparisons, including for people who do not publish content themselves. Fernández Contreras says social media can promote “normative models of domesticity” that should be questioned, linking interior ideals to broader patterns of representation.
At the same time, the article does not present online visibility as inherently incompatible with comfortable or personal living. The Berlin Chapters’ account offers a counterpoint: a space can be photographed and widely viewed without its residents experiencing it as a permanent performance. The distinction is relevant to readers weighing whether design choices serve their own routines, an audience, or both.
The wider design implications are also mixed. Treating a home like a gallery can give individual artworks, furniture and craft more attention, while reducing visual clutter through storage and carefully composed rooms. That approach can create distinctive interiors, but it may also elevate a narrow set of image-friendly domestic styles. The report raises that concern without claiming that social media alone determines how people decorate.
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From Private Rooms to Digital Backdrops
Livingetc describes the new series as a collection of essays, interviews and personal stories about how homes shape and reflect people’s lives. Its first report places social media within a longer history: people have always used objects and interior spaces to express identity and aspiration. The change, in the publication’s account, is that domestic images can now circulate to a potentially lasting public audience.
The pandemic is presented as an accelerator, not the origin, of this development. With more people working and communicating from home, rooms acquired visible roles in online meetings and broadcasts. For professional creators, the home may also be a workplace, studio and portfolio. Renovation can be documented from demolition through sourcing to a finished-room reveal, turning a project into ongoing content.
The report also considers the home’s resemblance to a gallery: artworks may be given uninterrupted wall space, collectible furniture displayed as sculpture, and everyday objects stored out of view. It notes that this overlap between art, craft and furniture can produce rich interiors, while emphasizing that a room’s visual arrangement does not by itself tell us how it feels to live there.
““Aspirational futures””
— Javier Fernández Contreras, architect and academic
How Deeply the Online Gaze Reaches
The supplied report does not quantify how often people change their homes to suit social media, or establish that platform exposure directly causes particular design choices. It offers expert interpretation and personal testimony rather than survey results or a comparison of households. The scale of the effect on people who do not create interior content is therefore not measured.
It is also unclear how widely the Berlin Chapters’ experience applies to other creators or residents. The duo says their home feels like a home when they are not producing content, but the report does not compare their account with other creators’ routines, financial arrangements or privacy concerns. Nor does it establish whether the visual patterns it describes are driven chiefly by platforms, commercial design culture, personal taste or other influences.
Further Stories on Domestic Life
Livingetc says “The Meaning of Home” will continue through essays, interviews and personal stories grounded in design, with later pieces addressing cultural, psychological, historical, political and economic forces that shape domestic life. The publication has not provided a schedule for upcoming installments in the supplied material.
For readers, the report leaves a practical question rather than a definitive answer: when choosing how a room looks, how much weight should go to how it photographs, and how much to how it works for the people living there? Further reporting in the series may add other perspectives, but the opening piece does not set out a single standard for balancing private comfort with public presentation.
Key Questions
What is “The Meaning of Home”?
It is a new Livingetc series of essays, interviews and personal stories about the forces that shape how people live and think within their homes. The opening report focuses on social media and domestic interiors.
Does the report say people design their homes mainly for Instagram?
No. It examines how social platforms may shape expectations and presentation, but it does not claim that people generally design their homes mainly for online audiences. The Berlin Chapters say their space remains their home first.
What does Javier Fernández Contreras argue?
He argues that social platforms can influence how people assess their own homes and can promote normative ideas of domesticity. The report presents this as his analysis, not as a quantified finding.
The report does not quantify how many people change their interiors for social media, how large the effect is, or whether platform exposure directly causes specific design choices. It also does not establish how representative the featured creators’ experience is.
Source: livingetc.com
