The Whitechapel Gallery hosted a seminal exhibition in 1956, This is Tomorrow. Arguably its most emblematic piece was a collage by the artist Richard Hamilton, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ Hamilton playfully brought us right into the field of domesticity. For our first major studio exhibition of 2026, we adopted this lens to explore the practice’s housing portfolio. We explored what we find special about how people lived in these places, and how they are so different from one another. Shedding the ‘mass’ of scale that is this work, our wish was to share some of the daily moments that occur in and around these maturing places.
What Makes a Home featured two videos exploring two recently completed housing projects: Capella and Porchester Road, a gallery of models and a photographic essay We transformed our OnSpace into a domestic setting à la Richard Hamilton with furniture generously provided by Vitra.
As architects, Allies and Morrison has designed more than 14,000 homes in London alone, and thousands more in cities such as Cambridge, Dublin and Doha. Today, approximately 5,000 units are onsite or will soon go to site.
