Interior Architecture Commons^™

Unplanned Public Nature Interiority, Kendra Locklear Ordia

Interiority

This paper advances a theory of urban interiority through the concept of public nature interiority, integrating ecological thinking into the spatial, sensory, and temporal conditions of exterior spaces that feel interior. Drawing on works by Tine Poot, Richard Sennett, Liz Teston, and Suzie Attiwill, it challenges binary distinctions between interior and exterior, emphasising relational and dynamic urban conditions. Using Attiwill's notions of collective individuation and an ecology of subjectivity, interiority is reframed as being shaped not only by human perception and experience with nature but also by biotic relations and multispecies interactions. The theory is situated within terrain vague—indeterminate, overlooked …

Villa Verde As A Quasi-Object: The Renegotiation Of Spatial Boundaries And Interiority, Tugba Cestel, Senem Kaymaz

Interiority

An architectural object interacts with its user through its functional and formal qualities. However, when stripped of these attributes, it discloses the potential to transform the phenomenal system it inhabits alongside the subject. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s hammer analysis and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, this study explores the relationship between a user and an architectural object that lacks a predefined form or function. It examines how the subject’s intervention can reconfigure such an object into a quasi-object. This relationship establishes a conceptual bridge that can be read through both phenomenological and relational frameworks. In this domain, where spatial boundaries and …

Meanwhile Interiors, Interiority And Becoming Exterior, Cathy Smith

Interiority

This paper explores the resonances between stakeholder conceptions of 'meanwhile' or transient urban interiors and the notion of interiority as a mobile construct intertwined with wider social and material forces. The focus is on the positioning of these interiors in relation to broader community and neighbourhood agendas, invoking what Jill Stoner describes as a becoming exterior. Although the so-called 'meanwhile use' of vacant or sub-market-condition buildings is an increasingly common tool for activating and managing underused property assets in global cities, much of the existing discourse focuses on policy and placemaking implications rather than design dimensions. Drawing on interviews with …

Postcolonial Cosmogram: Modern Interiority Of The Methodist Heritage Gallery In Sibu, Sarawak, Sanjeh Kumar Raman, Tong Jia Chian

Interiority

This study examines the conservation and transformation of the Ching Ang Methodist Church into the Methodist Heritage Gallery (MHG) in Sibu, Sarawak, highlighting its role in placemaking and identity construction within the Foochow-Methodist community. By exploring the interplay between colonial modernity, heritage interpretation, and ethno-religious provenance, the research situates MHG as a critical site of memory and cultural articulation. Using an interpretivist approach, this study employs building surveys, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis to investigate the architectural, social, and symbolic dimensions of the MHG. The findings reveal that the gallery's adaptive reuse not only preserves Methodist-Foochow heritage but also serves …

Space Modification In One-Bedroom-Plus Units For Generation Y In Bangkok, Thanakorn Taraka

Interiority

This study examines space modification in one-bedroom-plus condominium units in Bangkok, focusing on the relationship between Generation Y’s characteristics and how they adapt interior layouts to suit their lifestyles. While previous research has addressed flexible housing in general, few studies have focused specifically on how Generation Y modifies space within condominium units to accommodate their needs in the Bangkok context. The study analysed 7,596 one-bedroom-plus units developed in Bangkok and modified by 44 architectural stakeholders to reflect Generation Y's preferences. Using function, partition, and floor indicators, and applying k-means cluster analysis, six spatial modification approaches were identified: open-space layouts, functional …

Embodied Interiority In The Shishinden: Ritual Space, Political Symbolism, And Interior Experience In Japanese Imperial Architecture, İlknur Yüksel Schwamborn

Interiority

This study investigates the Shishinden, the principal ceremonial hall of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, as a site where spatial hierarchy, ritual movement, and material atmosphere converge to construct a unique form of interiority. Rather than treating the hall merely as a stylistic or historical artifact, the paper analyses how interior experience is actively produced through embodied ritual practices, symbolic spatial organisation, and sensory orchestration. By focusing on the interaction between architecture, politics, and cultural cosmology, the study demonstrates how the Shishinden functions as an affective interior that communicates imperial authority and sacred order. The findings contribute to contemporary interiority discourse …

Metamorphosis, Allegra Codamon

Theses and Dissertations

Relevance to Interior Design Research

In Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman, he starts from the premise that thinking and feeling are contained in the process of making. This thesis builds on that premise, arguing that through the embodied process of glassworking, making constitutes a form of interior knowledge—where perception, memory, and bodily awareness are formed through material resistance and responsiveness. Drawing on Sennett and Juhani Pallasmaa, this work positions glassmaking as a mode of thinking-through-doing, in which interiority is produced through sustained material engagement.

Research Question

What does interiority embodied through the making process look like? This question will be investigated …

Waxing And Waning: Hidden Interiors Of Grassroots Expression, Asmita Baskar

Theses and Dissertations

Concealed interiors historically emerged from necessity in response to dominant systems around surveillance, control, and visibility. These hidden spaces carefully regulated access, cultivated intimacy, and enabled self-expression within grassroots groups and marginalized communities. Operating free from surveillance and in contrast to surrounding architectural and urban systems, these concealed spaces were not formally “interior designed”, yet they reveal how communities activate the interiors they encounter to retain agency.

Scholarship on grassroots resistance is largely examined through sociology, anthropology, psychology, or political science, with limited literature directly linking interiority, interior design, and resistance within covert spaces. This thesis addresses the gap in …

Decrypting Interiority Of Albert Camus' The Stranger Through Absurdist Architectural Symbolism, Peter Akongfeh Agwu, Angela A. Ajimase, Edward Ugbada Adie, John Ogidi Acha

Interiority

Since its publication in 1942, Camus' The Stranger (L'Étranger in French) has captivated readers and scholars alike, sparking a wealth of critical analysis and interpretation. However, the novel's minimalist descriptions of interior spaces have often been overlooked in academic discourses, making it a perennial subject of further scholarly inquiry. This study seeks to decrypt the interiority of this text by examining the absurdist architectural symbolism and dissecting the spatial elements embedded in its narrative. The aim is to unveil new layers of meaning in the protagonist's internal psyche and existential condition. Through close reading and thematic analysis of relevant passages, …

Uncertain Future Dwelling: Emergent Interiors Of The Metaverse, Belinda J. Dunstan, Michael Stonham, Demet Dincer

Interiority

Contemporarily, a flood of digital interior architectural imagery has emerged of spaces developed for the Metaverse, a forthcoming immersive 3D virtual world. These spaces are not bound by the conventions of architectural practice nor the demands of the physical world, providing an opportunity for design exploration and innovation in the future of interiors and positing challenges to core architectural concepts that have accompanied traditional practice. This research offers a visual analysis of aesthetic trends and new typologies present in the interior architectural spaces designed for the Metaverse. The analysis features a curated and collaged collection of works from ten creators …

The Dollhouse, Kristina Miesel

Masters Theses

Dollhouses, while rooted in architectural representation, have historically been excluded from architectural discourse, relegated to the devalued realm of the frivolous and feminine. With a complex history, connected to craft, education, and play dollhouses have commonly been perceived as mere reflections of existing social hierarchies. However, this perception tends to overlook the creative agency wielded by people, particularly girls, as they engage with dollhouses, reinterpreting their functions and challenging norms. Crafted traditionally at a scale of 1:12, these miniature homes intricately capture different aspects of our domestic environment. Within the walls of a dollhouse, architectural elements often assume a secondary …

Typology And Interiority Of Cohousing In Europe 1981–2021, Virginia De Jorge-Huertas, Justo De Jorge-Moreno

Interiority

This work aims to research the connection between cohousing architecture and interiority. For this purpose, the analyses are structured in two phases. The first consists of the characterisation and identification of underlying typologies of European cohousing projects in the last three decades, 1981–2022. The second phase consists of the connection between the interiority concepts (in terms of planimetry, typology, spatial syntax, and interior spaces) and the cohousing architecture in the case studies selected from the first phase, which made it possible to compare cohousing projects and propose future strategies. The research identifies a typology with two clusters of cohousing projects …

Interiority And Agency: Exploring Self In Context With Others In The Act Of Creation, Barbara Young

Interiority

This investigation seeks to extend the discourse on interiority. I am an interior designer and, therefore, pose questions as they relate to design process, specifically that the concern regarding interiority is not necessarily something to design for, but as designers, it affects how and what we design. The presented cases are artistic explorations that provided an opportunity to interrogate interiority as it relates to my cognitive and creative process. Through an auto-ethnographic account, I present two acts of making. In the creation process, I interrogate meaning-making and perception that constitutes my subjective interiority, which can only be understood in context. …

Korean Public Bathhouse: Potential Of Interiority, Michelle Boyoung Huh

Interiority

This essay introduces the Korean public bathhouse, jjimjil-bang, to understand the concept of interiority from sociocultural and psychological perspectives. The author addresses interiority as a continuous process of defining the range of intimacy that changes with context, space, and time. Interiority involves individuating spatial and situational moments in the blended physical, perceived, and imaged environment. In exploring interiority, the case of jjimjil-bang suggests broad perspectives for understanding spatial circumstances as an integration of the activity, environment, and situation. The author introduces the characteristics of jjimjil-bang in terms of the program, spatial structure, and meaning of memory. To demonstrate the …

Illusory Interior: Public Housing As Uncanny Site, Dea Aulia Widyaevan

Interiority

In 2021, Indonesia participated in the London Design Biennale, focusing on the theme of Resonance. The pavilion's response centred around public housing as an uncanny site, examining the psychological barriers faced by evicted communities during their transition to public housing. This study provides a conceptual analysis by exploring how the uncanny aspects of the occupants' experiences are expressed in installation using the illusory interior as a spatial metaphor. Through practice-led research, utilising ethnographic surrealism and narrative inquiries, data was gathered and translated into artistic mediums through various experiments. The study identifies several factors contributing to the uncanny sensation among public …

To Find A Seat: Tracing The Ideoscape Of Seats In The Pathars’ Lifeworld In Penang, Sanjeh Kumar Raman, Safial Aqbar Zakaria

Interiority

This article examines the roles taken by seats in the buildings that form the lifeworld of Pathars—traditional Tamil goldsmiths—as an ideoscape following their migration to Penang during the British colonial period in the 19th century. This study used a phenomenological ethnography method to bring Pathars’ lived experiences with their physical environment to the forefront, highlighting the subjectiveness of architecture that shapes their lifeworld. The ideoscape of seats is analysed in themes to examine the power and politics of seats in the Pathars’ lifeworlds, including present-day migrant workers. To find a seat is a metaphor that elicits discussion on Pathars’ existential …

Interiority Of Agraharam: Traditional Houses In Temple Towns Of India, Manan Singal

Interiority

The article aims to provide a multisensory reading within the multiple scales of spaces in the traditional settlement of agraharam. This multisensory reading generates layers of interiority that exist across temples, streets, and houses. Agraharam is the traditional house of the Brahmin (priest) community found in temple towns of South India. This house responds to religious beliefs, tradition, and local climatic conditions and displays a balance of sensory experiences which enrich the overall living experience. In this article, interiority is referred to as the characteristic of being ‘inward,’ where memories and practices of a specific community are associated with …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

Understanding Dwelling Beyond The Terrestrial, Sungkyu Yang

Masters Theses

One of the first places humans have lived outside of Earth is the International Space Station. However, the quality of life on the station is dehumanizing because it was designed to be a laboratory, not a dwelling. The condition of the existing space is monotonous and dooms residents to a boring and tedious life. The expression of beauty inherent in human nature is missing. The operation of the ISS as a space environment research laboratory is scheduled to end in 2024. This thesis explores how to utilize the adaptive reuse potential of the International Space Station to better understand human …

Interiority And The Conditions Of Interior, Mark Pimlott

Interiority

Interiority pertains to the individual’s inner life, rich and set in opposition to the pressures of the world. This interiority has been allied with notions of the exclusive space or refuge of the interior. As a realm of privacy and subjectivity, of projections and receptions, the interior has come to be considered as a realm that, although profoundly affected by infiltrations of the world without, is ‘responsive’ to the individual at its centre. As such, it is a realm of illusions. However, there is another order of interior, a condition of interior, wherein spaces, settlements and territories are ideological realms …

Quasi-Materials And The Making Of Interior Atmospheres, John Stanislav Sadar

Interiority

In The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, Reyner Banham presents a parable in which, having come across an amount of wood, a nomadic tribe must decide how to use it to keep warm overnight: build a structure or build a fire (and burn the wood as fuel). The first of these uses the materials directly to create an amenable interior condition using the tangible materiality of geometric construction. The second, however, generates heat from combustion, thereby creating an intangible, graduated, thermal interiority, which one can draw deeper into, by moving closer to the fire, or recede from, by moving away. …