" The private individual, who in the office has to deal with reality, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions. This necessity is all the more pressing since he has no intention of allowing his commercial consideration to impinge on social ones. In the formation of his private environment, both are kept out. From this arises the phantasmagorias of the interior, which, for the private man, represents the universe. In the interior, he brings together the far away and the long ago. His room is a box in the theater of the world. "

― Walter Benjamin , The Arcades Project