IE:Studio Issue 4# The Hidden Interior

We create interiors everyday, either speculative when we work with our students or real, in practice. We observe, decode the existing, anticipate what might be possible and then construct new layers of meaning. Yet far from being just a material translation of our living needs, interiors are guardians of stories, memories and relationships. More often than not interiors, if not the architecture that frames them are altered, hidden, closed off – they become invisible, subtracted from our vision and perception. In this paper we are interested in these hidden and erased spaces, and the processes of disentanglement that can assert the agency of the interior within an investigative practice. Firstly we will establish the contexts for this discussion, setting out our theoretical position, and introducing the metaphor of the palimpsest and the concept of the gaze to underpin our approach. Further we will look at existing practices for documenting and interpreting hidden and concealed spaces and events. Then we will address the opportunities offered by digital technologies that can make visible the complexity of interior environments, and enable us to imagine and explore new configurations and future possibilities for these ‘lost’ spaces.

ATHENS JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE, 2021

This paper examines the interior as a condition that is continuously in production through the arrangement of objects and furniture. This is done along two lines of inquiry. First by examining a few different historical and contemporary conceptions of the domestic interior through the lens of architectural representation. Second by using the technique of laser scanning to document a number of inhabited interiors in two apartment buildings. Through a series of representations, or cloud drawings, produced from the scans, the paper presents three ways of reading the interior: as environments, as assemblies, and as materialities. Departing from Robin Evans’ writing on drawing techniques for representing the interior and their correlation to ways of inhabitation, the paper poses questions around how the understanding of the interior may shift when using emerging techniques for architectural representation. Through readings of Walter Benjamin as well as Sylvia Lavin, the paper discusses s...

2012

The IDEA 2012 Inaugural Research Exhibition An Interior Affair: a State of Becoming was a pilot to test the perceived ambiguity of the requirements provided by Australia's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) and New Zealand's Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) for creative works to be recognised as research through exhibition. A peer-reviewed exhibition model was piloted for interior design/interior architecture in order to provide appropriate quality assurance processes for creative works (See online interactive living archive: http://www.interiorbecomings.com/). A paper (see refernce below) outlining the model was presented at the IDEA 2012 symposium. In summary: 16 exhibitions (23 designer-researchers from United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia). Exhibition feedback: 'The exhibition proved that the physical experience of creative works [artefacts / installations] and the coming together of researchers and viewers adds an important dimension to research, its formats, their communication and exchange of ideas' (personal communication exhibition attendee). An IDEA Working Group: EXHIBITION AS RESEARCH Chair, A/Prof Marina Lommerse, Curtin University, Australia Jane Lawrence, University of South Australia, Australia Sven Mezhoud, Monash University, Australia Stuart Foster, Massey University, New Zealand PAPER: S.Mehzoud, J. Lawrence, S.Foster & M. Lommerse, An exhibition model to enable recognition and evaluation of creative works as research in interior design/interior architecture, IDEA Symposium Proceedings: Interior: a State of Becoming, Curtin University, Perth, p. 39, 2012.

Deborah Schneiderman and Amy Campos eds., Interiors Beyond Architecture (Routledge, 2017), 2018

Inspired by the discourse of urban interiors, this essay explores the ways in which concepts of interiority have structured the design of urban space from the mid-1960s until today. Beginning with two seemingly oppositional models - the urban living room and the urban surface – it introduces a series of contemporary examples in which concepts of interiority continue to contribute to the creative and innovative design of urban space. About the Book Published in Deborah Schneiderman and Amy Campos eds., Interiors Beyond Architecture (Routledge, 2018). Interiors Beyond Architecture proposes an expanded impact for interior design that transcends the inside of buildings, analysing significant interiors that engage space outside of the disciplinary boundaries of architecture. It presents contemporary case studies from a historically nuanced and theoretically informed perspective, presenting a series of often-radical propositions about the nature of the interior itself. Internationally renowned contributors from the UK, USA and New Zealand present ten typologically specific chapters including: Interiors Formed with Nature, Adaptively Reused Structures, Mobile Interiors, Inhabitable art, Interiors for Display and On Display, Film Sets, Infrastructural Interiors, Interiors for Extreme Environments, Interior Landscapes, and Exterior Interiors

This paper presents a theoretical framework that explores visual meaning in the design and use of interior space. It is comprised of three main parts. The first outlines the framework and draws on several key theories. The second introduces three very different constructs as case studies; that influence (or are a product of) spatial quality, namely: buildings, faces, and songs of alienation. The third part is a discussion about how each of these three constructs are linked to each other as well as to the idea of interiority. While architectural forms are containers of meaning, the way in which interior space is curated is driven by a deeper meaning. One that transcends form and function because people ultimately produce the meaning. And because each person is different, the conditions of interiority (in this case, the meaning that resides within each person) drives the meaning of external constructs (buildings and their interiors) that act as enclosures of meaning. The findings are that mind and body can be projected beyond the fa{\c c}ade and into the spaces contained in the buildings we occupy. The role of technology is also important because changes in technology help mediate the process linking the meaning inside with the meaning out there.

Proceedings of the Conference held at the Occupation: Negotiations with University of Brighton 2nd to 4th July 2009 Constructed Space, 2009

I argue that an interior is a condition of space defined by a set of relations activated by a participation in that space. To embrace a position and relationship to space is a process for constructing interiors. An interior practice emerges through an activation of this process. I will discuss a drawing strategy that considers, constructs and documents relations in space as a way of imagining and embodying the potential of spatial and temporal conditions, and which can in turn contribute to the design of interiors. These drawings can act as a tool to generate a relational condition. Through an engagement with existing space, a documentation of embodied responses can capture the potential for future interiors. Given that interior designers work into existing spaces, it is important to define the space being worked into. An interior of a space is not something that is universally perceived or defined. It requires negotiation. Rather than considering the interior as something that is in existence, I am advancing the notion that an interior is generated through an encounter with space. The drawing strategies discussed here, emphasise the relationship of designer and existing space. By engaging a position in space, apprehending spatial conditions and remaking an expression of the initial encounter, the drawing process builds an extended relationship to the existing.

2010

Thinking inside the Box: a Reader in Interior Design for the 21st Century, 2007

Interiors is an evolving yet slippery discipline. Whilst the interior is everywhere, it is nevertheless ephemeral and difficult to define. The interior domain is itself saturated with the everyday artefacts of consumption; it's a platform in which to project lifestyle; a place to benchmark fashionable social mores, to test patterns of behaviour and ritual; and the place of dwelling, sanctuary, memory and association. Interiors is becoming an increasingly diverse field of spatial design enquiry which - through education at least - operates without that familiar artefactual framework so common to partner disciplines of art, product and fashion. Interiors education operates within, and is limited by, paper space abstraction of visualising rather than doing. Whilst others have identifiable notions of disciplinary craft, what is the craft of interiors? Within education and practice, interiors occupy multiple identities, yet its historical, theoretical and contextual framework remains patchy, and is frequently contested and unclaimed territory in comparison to those of other disciplines. How, therefore, might we speculate about the role, validity and purpose of interiors in the twenty-first century? Thinking Inside the Box: A Reader in Interior Design for the 21st Century is an interior theory reader designed to enable students, academics, researchers and practitioners access to the broad and evolving nature of interiors thinking today. This collection of essays, by prominent thinkers, practitioners and key authors in the field from Australia, the UK, Italy, New Zealand, Turkey, Canada and the USA addresses an eclectic range of issues: the theoretical and conceptual nature of ‘doubleness’ between an interiors choreographed image and its actuality in the emergence of the interior; the slow home; textiles and feminism; branding the discipline; the relationship between the interior and the enclave in the contemporary age of terror; the regulation of the profession of interiors and deregulation of education; rereading theories of interior space; Hertzian interior space describing the lived traces of use, occupation and environment, amongst many others. This publication emerged initially from the international interiors conference and exhibition `Thinking Inside the Box: Interior Design Education in the 21st Century: New Visions, New Horizons & New Challenges' at the Lighthouse, Scotland's Centre for Architecture and Design held in March 2007, and organized by the Interiors Forum Scotland. Established in May 2005, the IFS comprise the leading Scottish interior programmes at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (University of Dundee), Edinburgh College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Metropolitan College (incl. City of Glasgow College) and Napier University in Edinburgh. This reader resulted from continued discussion and a shared concern and passion for the field of interior design. Like the earlier conference and exhibition, this reader is designed to provoke within the international community of interior designers and interior architects a desire to rediscover, reframe and perhaps reclaim the field of interior design; and, through the IFS, to establish an annual conference platform which places interior design / interior architecture firmly at the centre of critical debate, rather than on the margins of other design disciplines. In reading this publication one may sense that interiors, for all its diversity and indeed doubt, is re-emerging as a dynamic spatial activity with shared concerns and challenges: identity, anxiety over unregulated expansion, challenging perceptions, sharing good practice across an international interior community, advocacy, philosophy, reflecting and rethinking our discipline and issues of gender, amongst others. Very early on the IFS explored thinking inside rather than outside the metaphorical box as a vehicle for an event for the interiors community. Thus, began a number of free-ranging discussions about the nature, theory and practice of interior design, about the educational vision driving our institutions, the international dimension, the impact radical practice may have on visionary teaching, the emerging of recent interior research communities and theories, and how we might best promote, support and advocate excellence within this unique discipline. What we all shared, to some extent, was a feeling that, when compared to many design disciplines, interiors is somewhat hazily defined, perhaps undervalued and yet, as a result, full of possibilities. What has made both the IFS and Thinking Inside the Box possible is the relative intimacy of scale of the higher education interiors sector within Scotland, within which there exists a surprising diversity of programmes. At the time of writing, Scotland supported six honours degree courses in interiors, compared to some two hundred in England and Wales combined. This meant that it was relatively easy for the Interiors Forum Scotland to get started, to get talking and to get doing. However, it would be wrong to mistake small numbers for uniformity. The interiors degree courses of Scotland, situated as they are in different institutions and different cities, represent a wide range of viewpoints on the discipline. Post-industrial, style-conscious Glasgow, where interiors is driven by retail and hospitality, is a world (and fifty minutes on the train) away from staid, bourgeois Edinburgh, where museology, conservation and heritage are only now giving way to other disciplines. The Fine Art traditions of Duncan of Jordanstone, Glasgow School of Art, and Edinburgh College of Art have a very different pedigree to the more practical and professional focus of the former polytechnics. And of course, staff and students, attracted by these combinations of place and ethos, serve to reinforce and exaggerate these characteristics.

interiorsforumscotland.com