Interior Architecture Commons^™

El Croquis Night: Excursus Into Nocturnal Obliteration In Architectural Media, Javier Fernández Contreras

Interiority

El Croquis is one of the most prestigious architectural magazines in the world. Founded in 1982 by Richard Levene and Fernando Marquez, it publishes five monographs every year. The volumes dedicated to established Pritzker Prize names like OMA Rem Koolhaas, SANAA Sejima & Nishizawa, Herzog & de Meuron, Alvaro Siza or Rafael Moneo, are considered their respective oeuvre complète. The journal almost never publishes nocturnal photographs of interior spaces. The same goes for other major architecture magazines. In February 2020, HEAD – Genève invited Richard Levene to create a night edition of El Croquis. The workshop focused on the …

Prioritising Storage Practices: A New Approach To Housing Design Thinking, Elena Marco, Katie Williams, Sonja Oliveira

Interiority

Inhabitants of UK housing have more possessions than ever, whilst space for living in standardised houses is at a premium. The acquisition of material possessions, and how it affects both space and inhabitants’ wellbeing, has not previously been considered in architectural practice or housing policy research fields. This paper addresses this gap, by exploring how practising architects design for the storage of material possessions in housing. For the first time, it places storage practices at the centre of housing design thinking, by engaging practising architects in a design intervention to explore original design solutions that support inhabitants’ lives and lifestyles, …

Between Inhabited Interiors And Interiors On Display: Exploring Spatial Boundaries At Rosenborg Castle, Ane Pilegaard

Interiority

When visiting museums, we meet various types of physical barriers, such as glass vitrines, railings, and extended ropes, which have been put there to protect the objects on display. Such barriers are often accused of creating an unfavourable distance to museum objects but can also be thought of in more positive terms, as this article will seek to demonstrate. Based on analyses of museum display boundaries at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, where visitors can experience objects from The Royal Danish Collection within historic interiors, the article looks into the effects of such boundaries on the museum experience. The article explores …

The Public Interior Space Within Louvre Abu Dhabi Dome: A Visual Reflection, Karim Musfy, Marco Sosa, Lina Ahmad

Interiority

What defines an interior space? Is a traditional threshold the only building element considered as a clear component demarcating interiority from the outside environment? Could light or water be just as clear? How can scale challenge the identification of an internal space? Is a living space more identifiable as an interior volume? What about an internal courtyard for a family house outlining the beginning of a nation or the opposite extreme in the time-space continuum, a 24,000 square meters domed roof over a series of intimate spaces establishing a nation’s cultural intention internationally? Can a central space act as a …

New Territories: Reimagined Interiorities, Lucy Marlor

Interiority

At a time where boundaries within society, culture, and technology are continually challenged and redefined, even the commonly understood binary oppositions within areas such as gender, age, and digitality (Negroponte, 1995) are becoming less visible, measurable, and socially accepted. In this new realm where even physical reality is encroached upon by the digital, are the tangible and perceived distinctions between interior and architecture also becoming extinct? The emergence of more flexible and transitional space appears to not only blur the boundaries of inside and outside, interior and architecture, but also the previous distinctions of function. Space is no longer solely …

Virtual Interiorities, Adam Nash, Kate Geck, Andy Miller

Interiority

A practice of the virtual offers to interior design a dynamic conception of interiority that transcends simplistic representative notions of space, recognising the inseparable relationship of space and time, as well as an understanding of interiority as lived experience and its attendant amenability to active interpretation and therefore design. Ultimately, a practice of the virtual facilitates an understanding of interior as a dynamic and ongoing network of relations, and interior design as individuating participation in this network. In this article, we describe in detail an expanded notion of the virtual, and extrapolate how an understanding of this notion might help …

Animated Interior, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

An animated interior represents a departure from the idea of interior space as a permanent and timeless entity. The understanding of animated characters in the interior allows for the emergence of our complex relationship with space through various forms of engagement. The understanding of an animated interior offers further possibilities that become the basis of design practice. This issue of the Interiority journal presents a collection of inquiries and approaches that reveal various animated qualities of the interior in various contexts. The articles address the character of the interior, which is dynamic and dependent upon various temporal conditions of inhabitation. …

Grafting Interiority: Generative Methodologies Between The Natural And The Synthetic, Rana Abudayyeh

Interiority

Design is approaching a crucial period where the exchange between interior and exterior systems needs to be rethought and addressed from the standpoint of resilience and innovative environmental responses. The era of the detached interior bubble that is climate controlled and therein severed from natural systems is no longer justified or feasible. Interior spaces must respond to environmental conditions and proactively engage natural systems. The paper examines grafting methodology as an interior spatial formula that aims to generate complex sectional strategies for new programmatic typologies. It showcases work from a third-year interior architecture studio where students utilised natural landscapes as …

Art And Empathy: Self Discovery In A Dark Forest, Younser Lee

Graduate School of Art Theses

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million people report feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress as the world moves at an increasingly rapid pace and faces unprecedented challenges. However, many ignore these negative thoughts and fail to acknowledge them as a serious issue. My art, which shares my own experiences, creates safe, cathartic places for viewers to think about their own emotional experiences. Crucial to this process is my use of daily objects and the creation of individualized, participatory, and multisensory experiences.

My art relates to daily life and the negative emotions that we experience daily. I …

Researching Current Data Trends And Amenities To Improve The Community And Wellbeing In Higher Education, Michaela Gensler, Shayla Gardner, Brooke Ward

Undergraduate Research Conference

The interior design students goal was to design a new residence hall and dining facility for the SFASU campus. The design intention was to create functional spaces that allow student collaboration and motivate social interactions, while providing features that enhance student academic success and personal development.

Quantitative and qualitative data was collected by conducting surveys regarding the current housing and dining facilities on campus. Results from the current student’s surveys and from interviews of student/staff members on campus allowed the team to create the most functional plan. Researching current trends and amenities offered at campuses across the country assisted in …

Pediatric Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic: Design Focus On Invisible Disabilities With Sensory Sensitivity, Shelbi Boehme

Student Research Symposium

The focus of this research presentation is to design a Pediatric Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic in Logan, Utah providing diverse therapy spaces for children diagnosed with a range of disabilities. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) implemented some good generic standards for accessibility for persons with physical disabilities, but what about universal design for all disabilities? Designing spaces for a Pediatric Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic involves researching many different types of disabilities that would be treated at the facility. Particularly invisible disabilities such as Autism, Multiple Sclerosis, Asperger Syndrome, and Traumatic Brain Injuries. These types of disabilities are often left out when designing …

Holy Frit, Michele M. Desmarais

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Holy Frit (2021), directed by Justin Monroe.

Urban Interiority: Emerging Cultural And Spatial Practices, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

Discourses on the urban interior recently have emerged as a series of provocations and experimentations that highlight the critical understanding of the urban realm from the interiority perspective. In the fast-moving development of modern global cities, the urban interior concept becomes increasingly important. Cities are fast becoming containers for contemporary spatial practice, with urban spaces becoming melting pots of diverse cultures and communities. Viewing urban settings from the interiority perspective allows us to comprehend unique local characters in particular contexts. This issue of Interiority presents a collection of works that illustrate the expanded understanding of the urban interior, especially in …

Critical Spatial Practices: A Trans-Scalar Study Of Chinese Hutongs And American Alleyways, Gregory Marinic, Rebekah Radtke, Gregory Luhan

Interiority

Across time and cultures, the built environment has been fundamentally shaped by forces of occupancy, obsolescence, and change. In an era of increasing political uncertainty and ecological decline, contemporary design practices must respond with critical actions that envision more collaborative and sustainable futures. The concept of critical spatial practice, introduced by architectural historian Jane Rendell, builds on Walter Benjamin and the late 20th century theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to propose multi-disciplinary design practices that more effectively address contemporary spatial complexities. These theoretical frameworks operate through trans-scalar means to resituate the built environment as a nexus of …

Inscriptions: Narrating The Spatial Dynamics Of The Immaterial Interior, Arif Rahman Wahid, Kristanti Dewi Paramita, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

This paper explores inscription as a projection of the spatial dynamics of a setting, beyond a historical or cultural symbol in a context, and highlights that inscription—a written or carved message on a surface—is an element that immaterially demonstrates a more in-depth narrative of an interior. This paper focuses on exploring inscriptions embedded in various production settings in Jakarta and Central Java, collecting individual and observational accounts on the production of such inscriptions and their meanings. The study suggests that inscriptions demonstrate various roles, from providing information, mediating different spaces and performing as tools to assist activities. Inscriptions may traverse …

Z33 Hasselt: Hortus Conclusus As A Model For An Urban Interior, Bie Plevoets, Shailja Patel

Interiority

This contribution reviews the recent renovation of Z33—House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Hasselt, Belgium—in the light of its unique implementation of different levels of interiority. The institute is housed in the former beguinage, a site with a rich and layered history and one of the few green public spaces in the city centre. The intervention by architect Francesca Torzo builds further on and strengthens the existing qualities of the site through a creative process of copying and improving. By doing so, she changed the overall appearance of the beguinage, strengthening its quality as an enclosed …

One Typology For A Big Word: Office Of Diversity, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro

Interiority

Architecture’s original project was the invention of interiority, an enclosed area delimited from its context and made available for a narrowly defined public, function, and meaning. This original project was expanded during the Enlightenment with the concept of type as a method for producing architecture and establishing social institutions for molding subjectivities. This quest for interiority has reached its completion with world capitalism and its associated complexes, which, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have argued, are an interior without any possible or imaginable outside. In response to this condition, this essay argues that the original project of architecture—the conception …

The Interior World Of Books, Browsing, And Collecting Inside The City, Alison B. Snyder

Interiority

A most desirable and collectable material object is the ubiquitous book. A bound composite of printed pages with words and images, it contains a microcosm of myriad narrative viewpoints, experiences, and imaginations. Metaphorically, a book compactly conceals a kind of interior space that protects the provocative lives of people, their character, ideas, and explorations, thus communicating different scales of interiority. Book collectors, called bibliophiles, revere and covet books as their object of desire. The bibliophile as seeker-collector-seller partakes of simple and complex transactions that essentially protect the lives of the books. This essay concentrates on two main book browsing locations …

The Ikea X Uts Future Living Lab As A Learning Laboratory, Thea Brejzek, Lawrence Paul Wallen

Interiority

This article introduces the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab, a design research collaboration between IKEA Australia and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), founded in 2018. Authored by the Lab's two directors, the article traces the pedagogical and methodological approach of the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab. Situated within the Educational Design Research (EDR) discourse, this article demonstrates the development of a productive dialogue between two contrary operating principles: that of infinite creativity afforded to design students, and that of rigorous design development towards mass manufacturing and market distribution by a major global player in the design industry. …

Architectural Filth And The Heroic Passivism Of Farhadi's Salesman, Vahid Vahdat

Interiority

Architecture in Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman (2016) is not a mere passive backdrop to an otherwise unaffected narrative; it is an autonomous agent that takes part in the events that unfold, complicates the narrative, and even occasionally defies the ideological position of the film. By analysing interior spaces, architectural elements, urban infrastructure, and maintenance practices, I suggest that 1) the fluid visual boundaries of Farhadi’s spatial settings are instrumental in blurring the borders of truth and morality—themes that are central to his film; 2) the ontological study of architecture, from the moment of excavation to its ultimate fracture/failure serves as …

Archaeology Of The International Space Station, Justin Walsh, Alice Gorman, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Data Sets

The explicit goal of the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is to provide an understanding of material culture as a key component of life in space, on par with the research by biomedical and psychological scholars that has been ongoing since the 1960s. We take as our inspiration a phrase first used in the National Academy of Sciences report Human Factors in Long-Duration Spaceflight, which described a crewed spacecraft as “a microsociety in a miniworld” (Lindsley 1972, 23). One of our primary methods is the cataloguing of people and elements of material culture (objects and built spaces) from photographs …

Haven: Support For Mothers, Sarah Kincaid

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how a nonmedical interior environment can provide support and care for mothers during the perinatal period in order to prevent maternal mental health (MMH) issues such as anxiety and postpartum depression.

Patient Room Design: A Qualitative Evaluation Of Attributes Impacting Health Care Professionals, Lindsey Fay, Ms Arch, Joshua E. Santiago, Kevin Real, Kathy Isaacs

Interiors Faculty Publications

The focus of this research was to identify what attributes of patient room designs are most beneficial to health care professionals and to explore whether particular professionals hold certain beliefs about patient room attributes. Acute care, progressive care, and intensive care patient room designs were analyzed through the use of pre- and postoccupancy evaluations of a cardiovascular service line. Fourteen focus groups and 1 interview among 74 health care professionals were conducted. Qualitative analysis of the data was guided by a multidimensional framework. A descriptive quantitative assessment was additionally made to reveal positive, negative, or neutral trends and determine the …

Covid-10, Healthcare Interior Design + Provider Experience - How Does Your Space Work For You?, Ruth E.P. Deibler

Graduate Research Posters

The lack of research on healthcare staff experience and interior design of the spaces they work in is evident. A focus on staff perspective is needed, particularly staff who navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. This research seeks to capture those stories to develop further research in order to improve staff experience. The initial phase of this mixed-methods approach is a survey. Hypothetically, by placing providers at the center of qualitative research related to healthcare interior design, we can better understand existing healthcare spaces. Ideally, we can develop additional evidence-based, human-centered solutions to transform interior environments in healthcare.

The 20-year Women’s Health …

The Algorithmic Mashrabiya: Reimagining The Traditional Islamic Screen, Ahmed Nour

Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, a mashrabiya was an ornate wooden structure attached to the side of an Arabian building or house, with small, intricately patterned openings to provide both ventilation and privacy for the people inside. The patterns, following the geometric rules of Islamic ornament, lent a distinctive appearance to buildings in the region. A mashrabiya converted the house into a safe, private sanctuary, providing a magical scene inside, characterized by linear sun rays, filtered points of light and shadow. Over time, as building technology changed and the number of skilled craftsmen dwindled, the traditional mashrabiya has all but vanished. The aim of …

Flourish: Combating Food Insecurity & Promoting Wellness On A College Campus, Jocelyn Zavala

Theses and Dissertations

MOTIVATION In the past, it has been assumed that students enrolled in college are fairly privileged individuals unlikely to face challenges associated with poverty (Haskett et al., 2020). That assumption has been challenged in the past few decades and a survey released last year by the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice indicated that 45% of today’s higher education students face food insecurity (Goldrick-Rab et al., 2019). According to VCU’s Dean of Students Office, it is a situation in which a student lacks access to enough nutritious food in order to live a healthy, active life. Food insecurity can …

Shifting Interiority: Changing Encounters With Our Environment, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

During COVID-19 pandemic, the whole world has witnessed and experienced dramatic changes in all aspects of life. As we adapt our everyday lives to restrictions and limitations to fight the pandemic, it also has become a trigger for us to rethink and re-position knowledge on spatial design disciplines. This Interiority issue compiles contributions that respond to a special call for papers that address these questions: How does the pandemic, including its impacts from lockdowns and physical distancing, affect how we think about interior and architecture? What lessons can we learn from this situation that we can use in future interior …

Interior Design Teaching Methodology During The Global Covid-19 Pandemic, Lina Ahmad, Marco Sosa, Karim Musfy

Interiority

In March 2020, the World Health Organization officially announced the COVID-19 outbreak as a global Pandemic (WHO, 2020). During this time, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) introduced national preventative measures to slow the spread of the deadly virus by announcing the closure of schools and higher education institutions, and the commitment of online learning. Teaching faculty at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises (CACE) at Zayed University were suddenly facing the challenge of teaching design through a distance learning approach. As educators of interior design, the authors were part of the team tasked to find ways to teach design …

Investigating The Domestic Layers Adaptation During Pandemic, Afifah Karimah, Kristanti Dewi Paramita

Interiority

This paper expands the theoretical understanding of building layers proposed by Brand (1995) by investigating changes in the domestic environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brand’s layer framework breaks a built environment into “shearing layers” to examine its adaptation processes. This paper argues that ways of managing the risk of virus transmission in the built environment redefine the understanding of these layers. This paper takes the perspective of interiority to address these layers as instruments with the spatial qualities required of a resilient domestic environment. The study unpacks the theory of Brand’s layer framework, proposing the principles by which layers adapt …

The Charms Of An American Queen Anne: Rediscovered A-Lá Covid-19, David T. De Celis

Interiority

This moment, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, has provided an opportunity—sometimes forced via crisis, or via moments of quiet reflection—to consider the inside, interior time and space, in new ways. In America, like other countries, architectural styles have come to us from foreign lands. Numerous domestic structures were influenced by British events from the 1700s–1800s. These styles—these architectures—were transformed by local/regional/national influences and events—events like this current international pandemic—that push the proverbial pause button, and cause us to re-think design. The author, who now resides and works (along with his family) in an 1886 Queen Anne style home, contemplates the various …