“Interiors” brings into question the influence of multiple disciplines and the extent or, in some cases, the over-reaching of boundaries that shape the interior spatially and intellectually. A purposeful and rigorous orchestration of disciplinary relationships within an interior constitutes a form of curation, whereby elements such as architecture, furniture, art, and lighting are brought together to form a cohesive whole. Yet, ambiguity as to who, what, and how one defines interiors persists academically, professionally, and culturally. Can interiors stand on their own terms, or are they always a by-product of interdisciplinary efforts? More importantly, what alternative views, models, or frameworks may expand this otherwise binary choice between the disciplinary and the interdisciplinary?
In his 1994 book, What is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines, Paul Shepheard draws a distinction between the questions “What is Architecture?” and “What Should Architecture Be?” Through this slight but meaningful adjustment, he tries to get underneath the seemingly distinct categories that define the discipline such as history, design, research, and materials, opening up in this way a discussion of how these categorizations emerged in the first place. What are the underlying conditions, events, and questions that enabled their formation? Resisting singular answers, such questioning instead prompts a discourse that expands disciplinary knowledge.
The title of this journal, Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture situates interiors vis-à-vis a triad of terms that hold multiple connotations, suggesting a range of possible relationships that shape our intellectual understanding of interiors. This special theme issue takes Shepheard’s question and turns it to the interior to ask “What is Interiors?” as a means to question presumed disciplinary frameworks, much like Shepheard did, in order to define critical trajectories for new interiors scholarship and practice.
The logical place to begin with this theme issue was to have Shepheard give his insight on the substitution of “Interior” for “Architecture”; therefore, this issue is fortunate to begin with a Foreword written by Shepheard that identifies major characteristics inherent to the interior and unravels themes that emerge in the contributing essays. Contributors include academic leaders based in interior programs who, by the nature of their roles, are obligated to continuously rethink what is an interior. The topics that emerge span from the theoretical to the practical, past and present, material and immaterial. The resulting themes form a taxonomy that can be seen as the underlying DNA of interiors. These themes are not prescriptive in the sense of designing by technical instruction, but rather they are a collection of themes where physical matter transcends experience and time.
The themes confirm an inherent set of traits associated with the interior that engage the acts of concealing, revealing, leaving traces, and being malleable. At the same time, essays speak of the interior as being the container for the dynamic, static, fluid, liminal, memory, and time. Many oppositions and contradictions can be found in these, much like the Janus-faced myth of sharing the same threshold but pointed in opposite directions. Inherently, the dichotomies occupy a common threshold, whether physical or conceptual, thereby grounding the interior to many scales, and the physical and phenomenal forces that shape them.
These overarching themes are a reflection at this point in time of how we write, practice, teach, and learn about interiors. The themes, as unraveled by the contributors, introduce familiar concepts but reframed as a way of repositioning the conventional in order to expand the discipline of interiors. Perhaps because the practice and theory of interiors have matured over the decades, the discipline is no longer tied to previous conventions or bound by spatial limits.
The interior is often complete once it becomes occupied and sets into motion the temporary nature of events that unfold that designers cannot control. Similar to this, the interior is often difficult to define as a distinct form; that is, sometimes it is a curation of objects, whereas other times, it is a temporary installation, leaving the interior to be nimble, slipping in and out of its allied disciplines. As a result, the question of whether it will ever obtain an independent identity is continuously asked. Has it become a mutation of other disciplines? One belief is that it gains independence through professional licensure and academic accrediting bodies, but from a larger perspective, it still has one foot in the shadow of architecture, and if not that foot, then the other under the umbrella of decoration. But, I would argue that the hybrid of these – architecture and decoration – is a rich area that culminates in the interior. It is unfortunate that the hybrid is off-putting to those in architecture because of the association with decoration, and too robust for those in decoration because of the expectation that technical and structural issues are too complex to address. The hybrid, or rather the mutation, makes the interior unpredictable, yet reinforcing the nimble and fleeting character of interiors that adds to its compelling identity.
The starting point for reframing the question “What is Interiors?” began with Christine Cantwell, a former colleague who was prompted to address this question through the lens of interiors years earlier when we overlapped teaching at the same university with Shepheard. Her reframing has resonated with me since. This prompted me to ask and now thank Paul Shepheard for rethinking “What is Architecture?” in the context of interiors.
I would also like to thank the publisher, Taylor & Francis, for refreshing the journal’s identity with volume eight. The new cover design, addition of color images, and a variety of manuscript types cross a threshold for this journal that now opens the discipline more broadly, asking contributors and readers to address the question of “What is Interiors?” as a journal and a discipline.
Editor-in-Chief
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lois Weinthal
Lois Weinthal is Chair of the School of Interior Design at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research and practice investigate the relationship between architecture, interiors, clothing, and objects, resulting in works that take on an experimental nature. This methodology was the basis for her edited book, Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory. She studied architecture and design at Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. Email: [email protected]