Interior Architecture Commons^™

Too Much ‘Stuff’ And The Wrong Space: A Conceptual Framework Of Material Possessions, Elena Marco, Katie Williams, Sonya Oliveira

Interiority

Space for living in new build houses in the UK is at premium and households have more stuff than ever before. The way this stuff is accommodated in dwellings can significantly affect residents’ quality of life and well-being. This paper presents a new conceptualisation of material possessions that could be of use to those involved in housing design. Three universal characteristics of material possessions; value, temporality and visibility are used to identify the space in the home that possessions might require. A conceptual framework that integrates these characteristics with spatial information about the interior of the home is developed. The …

Placing Elsewhere: Approaches For Physical And Digital Flânerie, Ying-Lan Dann, Liz Lambrou

Interiority

This paper will discuss approaches and tools for physical and digital flânerie that emerged within an RMIT second- and third-year Interior Design Studio, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the third week of classes in March 2020, social distancing measures in Australia led us to transpose urban site-based student projects online. Though unforeseen, this was taken as an opportunity for the interior design studio to explicate modes of physical and digital flânerie, via meandering and looking. We discuss teaching and learning experiences within the digital classroom, which we discovered was a dynamic chat-scape of hyperlinks, fragments, displacements and delays. We …

Reading Between The Lines: Revealing Interiority, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

Words, texts and narratives have the potential to reveal the complexity of interiority; they can tell stories beyond the physical materiality of space to reveal spatial occupation, address social and cultural issues embedded in space and capture the trajectories of inhabitation over time. This issue of Interiority addresses writing and reading as a form of inquiry towards the idea of interiority being embedded within the represented forms of architecture and interior. The articles in this issue demonstrate various forms of inquiry concerning the idea of interiority through various media of ‘writing,’ then explore how their reading becomes a way of …

Slashed Interiors: Text/Space, Igor Siddiqui

Interiority

This essay explores the relationship between text and space by considering the notion of writing interiors as a form of creative practice. The research focuses on the textual and spatial uses of the punctuation mark slash (/), as evidenced in a range of text-based works by Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Anni Albers, and other artists. The first part of the essay surveys the typographic character’s varied uses in written language; the second part considers its role within artwork titles, namely how its presence shapes spatial interpretations of each artwork in question; in the third part, preceding the …

Buildings, Faces, Songs Of Alienation: How Interiority Transforms The Meaning Out There, Peter Marthinus De Kock

Interiority

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 in#uence (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 …

Urban Interiority In The Anthropocene, Nerea Feliz Arrizabalaga

Interiority

This paper explores how interior design could amplify the current discourse on sustainability within urban public space. The consideration of a number of contemporary authors that are questioning the traditional notion of interiority situates this paper within an expansive understanding of interiority in the context of the Anthropocene. Interiority is considered as a transferable condition based on modes of interior occupation, that can take place on the outdoors, and is often found in public spaces within dense urban areas. In the face of an upcoming biodiversity crisis, this text advocates for a necessary disciplinary shift away from traditional anthropocentric views, …

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy And The Built Environment, Dak Kopec, Kendall Marsh

Interiority

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) are often connected to the development of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease commonly found in athletes, military veterans, and others that have a history of repetitive brain trauma. This formative exploratory study looked at person-centred design techniques for a person with CTE. The person-centred design method used for this study was based on a two-tiered reductionist approach; the first tier was to identify common symptoms and concerns associated with CTE from the literature. This information provided specific symptoms that were addressed through brainstorming ideations. Each singular ideation accommodated the singular, or small cluster …

The Local Festival Of Kampos: A Fictional Narrative Of Place, Space And Interiority, Maria Vidali

Interiority

This article is created out of the architectural space and narratives of village life. The narratives concern the interiority of life in Kampos, a farming village on the Greek Cycladic island of Tinos, on the day when the village celebrates the Holy Trinity, its patron saint. The village area on this festive day is depicted in the movement of the families from their houses to the church, the procession from the patron saint’s church to a smaller church through the main village street, and, finally, in the movement of the villagers back to speci!c houses. Through a series of spatial …

On The Nature Of Public Interiority, Liz Teston

Interiority

This essay explores the intersection between interiority, urbanism, and human perception. I view interiority as a condition of the senses rather than an indoor place. Revelations of interiority can be discovered within the urban realm, in public spaces, and in intimate interior conditions. I am especially interested in “public interiority” or these cases of interiority that can be found in exterior urban places. Understanding interiority as a perceived condition grounds the built environment in phenomenology, varied human experiences, and everyday conditions. Herein, I begin with an ontology of interiority, which focuses on various ways of perceiving the nature of things—phenomenology, …

Interiority: At The Threshold, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

Being at the threshold offers an ambiguous spatial experience. The idea of threshold is relevant to the discourse of interiority, as it expands our understanding of the opposing condition of inside-outside, or interior-exterior, which have become the recurring themes in many discussions on interiority. This issue of Interiority attempts to address what actually occurs at the threshold – the occupation and the experience of the threshold. The contributors in this issue address the emergence of spatial ideas that define the new relationship between inside and outside, between interior and architecture.

Breaking The Binary Oppositions Of The Interior: A Momentary Permanence, Roderick Adams, Lucy Marlor

Interiority

The previously static view of the interior is changing, as social, economic and cultural factors produce a new requirement for building flexibility and potentially forcing a change to the normal spatial paradigms. There is an emerging altered dynamic between building, interior and user, posing the question – when does architecture become the interior? Conceptions of the future interior give renewed focus to the more flexible void space, over the opposing static architectural shell. By adjusting the realms of contact within a space and limiting the influence of architecture, the user is re-envisioned as a central adjudicator of spatial experience. Provocatively, …

House, Street, City: Le Corbusier’S Research Towards A New Urban Interior, Patrizio M. Martinelli

Interiority

Le Corbusier’s investigations, conducted between the 1910s and the 1930s, were focused on a new relationship between street and building. This research started from texts about the city, in particular, the writings of Eugène Hénard’s. These essays, dating back to 1903-1909, dealt with the necessity of a renewed strategy for the urban street, breaking down the monotony and the problems related to the sequence of buildings and creating a series of places as squares, gardens, and open courtyards: actual urban rooms between streets an buildings. Learning from those texts, Le Corbusier worked on a series of polemical writings about the …

Tokyo’S Kyōshō Jūtaku: Nature Through The Inside, Outside And The In-Between, Cathryn Klasto

Interiority

Born out of conversations with Japanese architects, as well as intimate spatial encounters with small houses (kyōshō jūtaku) in Tokyo, this paper discusses the way in which nature emerges and functions within fourth generation small housing design. Japan’s relationship with nature has generated many interconnecting architectural layers over centuries, arising out of culture, religion and the practicalities and consequences of the country’s economy, climate and experiences of natural disasters. These layers have fostered a deep and complex connection to land, and as a result, there is still a high value placed on owning one’s own plot, no matter …

From Interior To Interiority: Locating Key Historical Moments In The Relationship Between Spaces And Individuals, Bruno Cruz Petit

Interiority

We spend increasingly more time in architectural interiors, spaces that can give us quality of life and interesting scenarios for the growth of identity and interiority. However, both spatial interior and psychological interiority faces difficulties inherent to contemporary life. This text proposes a critical review of the literature on the socio-spatial archeology of the subject in order to see possible paths of realisation of interiority in the present. The document presents several stages in the sociocultural evolution of an interior space that needs to be described with different adjectives (spiritual, hedonistic, promiscuous) and groups the most relevant contributions of the …

The Visual Mechanisms Of Seeing In Experiencing The Interior, Maria M. C. Sengke, Triandriani Mustikawati

Interiority

This paper discusses the visual mechanisms of seeing and their significance in experiencing an interior space. The discussion investigates what the observers can obtain from seeing activities. The aim is to emphasise on the role of seeing as a way of constructing the relation between human and the interior environment. The paper explores the mechanisms of seeing by focusing on two different ways, which are seeing in a static position from a point of observation, and seeing while moving through a path of observation. The exploration in a hospital setting finds out that seeing from a point of observation gave …

Rationality And Creativity Interplay In Research By Design As Seen From The Inside, M. Mirza Y. Harahap, Kate Tregloan, Anna Nervegna

Interiority

While research by design is critical in the development of architecture and design knowledge, there is still a need to deeply understand the design knowledge about the interplay between rationality and creativity in research-by-design projects. This paper attempts to address this issue by illustrating, rather than conceptualising, the inside process of a research by design project. The inside process will be discussed from three different points of view: (1) research or design interest tendency, (2) the performance of reflective attitude, and (3) a combination of views (1) and (2). The study resulted in an illustration of the interplay that suggests …

Self Storage: A Contemporary Archaeology Of Domestic Interiority, Emma Filippides

Interiority

This architectural historical study aims to interrogate rituals of contemporary inhabitation in the United Kingdom by tracing the rise of the self storage facility. While the proliferation of domestic self storage in the UK is derived from a web of correlations, this research considers self storage as a lens through which the subjective experience of inhabiting the neoliberal city, may be understood. Drawing from archaeological methods to conduct a material study of the contents of abandoned storage units, this study engages specifically with self storage as a long-term solution to domestic storage inadequacies. The material and theoretical engagements of this …

Contested Interiority: Sense Of Outsideness/Insideness Conveyed Through Everyday Interactions With University Campus Doors, Lisa Stafford

Interiority

Our sense of place in the world is mediated through our everyday interactions with both people and space (Seamon, 1985). Everydayness is one of the most profound levels and shapers of human experience, yet too often this level of relation is overlooked and taken for granted in the design of environments (Dyck, 2005; Tuan, 1977). In this article, I present a first-person phenomenological account of my everyday interactions with doors on a university campus to uncover contested notions of interiority. My body-space routines reveal how a sense of outsideness/insideness is controlled through my interactions with objects such as doors, door …

Material Atmospheres: Theorising Recent Shifts In Interior Visualisation, Gregory Marinic

Interiority

Much like Walter Benjamin's analysis of the Parisian arcades during the interwar years of the early 20th century, emerging methods of seeing interior spaces reveal a deeper gaze into the contextual, material, and phenomenological conditions that produce more nuanced visions of interiority. A collective consciousness surrounding these constructed narratives is reflected in charged associations with the most salient imperatives of our time—globalisation, resource depletion, ecological degradation, and political instability—as well as their corresponding effects on the built environment. These visual provocations have incrementally percolated up to embody an expanding field of design activism for educators, theorists, practitioners, and students. How …

Interior Decoration To Exterior Surface: The Beleaguered Relief, Susan Hedges

Interiority

Surface articulation is a critical issue for interior architecture, and this paper sees the wall as a point of intersection where art and structure may converge and collide. A place of experimentation and a site of performance, built volumes and surface embellishments blur and reinforce edge conditions and ornament as embellishment and essential structure merge.

This paper explores a sculptural relief Copper Crystals (1965) constructed by Jim Allen for the ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) House (1964) situated at 61 Molesworth Street in Wellington, New Zealand. Following the building's failure, due to a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, the sculptural relief survived a …

Interiority In Everyday Space: A Dialogue Between Materiality And Occupation, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

Everyday space is a setting where ordinary acts, activities and events take place. It is interesting to examine closely how interiority is defined, understood and manifested in everyday space as a way to understand the inhabitation of the interior. The interiority of everyday space is defined not only by occupation but also through materiality. This issue of Interiority presents articles that address the relationships between interior materiality and different perceptual constructs and experiences of architectural space as inherent in the occupation of the everyday space.

Designing The Threshold: A Close Reading Of Olafur Eliasson’S Approach To ‘Inside’ And ‘Outside’, Demet Dincer, Thea Brejzek, Lawrence Wallen

Interiority

This article discusses Icelandic installation artist Olafur Eliasson’s approach of the threshold as a productive liminal space rather than as a static boundary between the inside and the outside. Often defined as the physical division between the interior and the exterior in architecture, the authors argue that by looking at Eliasson’s works in detail, the threshold’s inherent capacity of comprising a dynamic dialogue between inside and outside where one is determined by the other unfolds. This paper proposes that designing the relationships between inside and outside involves subtle renegotiations and redefinitions of conventionalised notions of their boundaries and a resultant …

Performative Interiors: Terminological And Theoretical Reflections On The Term 'Performative', Ayman Kassem

Interiority

‘Performative’ is an emerging term in architectural discourse. The word ‘performative’ is able to describe spatial qualities and design approaches. The term is mostly linked to the concepts of open-form, and flexibility which are characters that give the spatial design a strategic aspect as the ability to anticipate and host predicted and unpredicted occurrences, and to adjust to future changes, which also gives architecture the character of an unfolding ‘event’ in time and in space. This paper seeks to investigate the terminological and the theoretical dimensions of the term ‘performative.’

Editorial: Interiority As Relations, Paramita Atmodiwirjo, Yandi Andri Yatmo

Interiority

Understanding the relations between human being and its environment is critical in our attempt to create an appropriate built environment. Interior as a discipline has a privilege to be in the intersection between subjective experience of human users and the physical manifestation of environment occupied by the human. Looking at interiority as a relational construct that occurs between the users and environment should be an essential basis for design practice. This issue of Interiority intends to explore various forms of relational construct that emerge in the interaction between space and the users and to identify possible challenges posed by such …

Passage Territories: Reframing Living Spaces In Contested Contexts, Kristanti Dewi Paramita, Tatjana Schneider

Interiority

This paper investigates the concept of ‘passage territories’ (Sennett, 2006), as living spaces constructed from one’s passage of movement from one separate space to another, and how it extends the discussion of interiority in contested contexts. Through observations of living spaces and the narrative accounts of dwellers’ in Kampung Pulo and Manggarai neighbourhoods of Jakarta, this study draws attention to the interiority of dispersed and layered spaces occupied by the kampungs’ dwellers. In this context, passage territories are driven by a) a limitation of space that, in turn, triggers the need to acquire more space; b) the occupation of a …

Some Distinctive Features Of Narrative Environments, Tricia Austin

Interiority

This paper explores key characteristics of spatial narratives, which are called narrative environments here. Narrative environments can take the form of exhibitions, brand experiences and certain city quarters where stories are deliberately being told in, and through, the space. It is argued that narrative environments can be conceived as being located on a spectrum of narrative practice between media-based narratives and personal life narratives. While watching a screen or reading a book, you are, although often deeply emotionally immersed in a story, always physically ‘outside’ the story. By contrast, you can walk right into a narrative environment, becoming emotionally, intellectually …

Perceptions Of Spatiality: Supramodal Meanings And Metaphors In Therapeutic Environments, Stephanie Liddicoat

Interiority

This paper explores the perceptions of the spatiality of individuals who self-harm, with the aim of understanding the design aspects which foster supportive therapeutic environments. Analysis of responses found that there were key similarities in areas of perception of architectural interior space, refuting the commonly held view that all architectural response is purely subjective, and that subjective experience cannot be shared. Three examples of perceptions of interior therapeutic environments are discussed to highlight how the perceptions of spatiality of individuals who self-harm consists of a particular cluster of spatial understandings, behaviours and focuses, manifesting as a strong emotional overtone overlaid …

Insidevisible Cities: Transcending Substance, Zarya Vrabcheva

Interiority

The interior, as one of the most human and sensual forms of architecture, is an intimate connection with the built environment and a powerful tool in provoking and altering the human mind, stimulating its curiosity, desires and solutions by way of visible and ambient matter. I aspire to explore the sense of interiority as betweenness, a space of transition in which both the human and the architecture body transcend from one state to another through empathetic interaction. Empathy, besides the ability to feel and experience someone else’s emotions and mental state, also depicts our capacity to feel and experience situations, …

Indeterminate Duration, James Carey

Interiority

Interiority, in relation to my practice, is the inherent curiosity to the notions of process, time and duration. It is a practice of mark making, marking time, making time, and time making; foregrounding duration and marking an occurrence. My technique is one of working responsively to interiors, allowing particular temporal conditions to surface within specific sites and situations. The marks – whether they be on a canvas, a house, a building, or within a gallery – materialise immateriality and allow the residue of particular processes to be assembled as collections of materialised and spatialised time. This paper discusses an artist …

Sensorial Interior: Museum Diorama As Phenomenal Space, Sarah Edwards

Interiority

Museum dioramas are widely recognised as historic visual tropes used to frame the grandeur of the outside world within an interior viewing space. With the development of digital technologies, data projection and soundscape have increasingly replaced diorama production as a means to transform these once static-animal-posed-in-painted- habitat with immersive interiors that engage the visual and aural senses alike. Andre Breton proposes that two modes of consciousness exist: an exterior world of facts and an interior world of emotions. These interiors and exteriors produce an interface and exchange. An invitation to respond to the interior of RMIT University’s First Site gallery …