As academic subject matter, interiors permeate the curricula of multiple interrelated disciplines that together provide the educational foundation for an expanded range of creative and professional practices. Such interiors-oriented academic programs cut across fields like architecture, design, and art and are as diverse as the types of practices that shape contemporary interiors spatially and discursively. Any overall view of interiors education as such resists singularity, simplification, or standardization, benefiting instead from frameworks that embrace diversity, multivalence, and heterogeneity. The most innovative, influential, and effective pedagogies have the capacity not only to mirror practice, but also shape its future trajectories. This theme issue of Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture brings together a wide variety of exemplary pedagogical approaches that represent the latest innovations of interiors education.
The call for contributions posed a series of questions for authors to consider in their method of teaching, which would then be reflected in the student work being produced. Significant questions such as what constitutes an entry into interiors education, and how does one define its intellectual and technical foundations? How does the space of the studio impact learning? What methods of instruction advance students’ spatial thinking? Which models of experiential learning are particularly impactful and effective? What constitutes interiors-based design research and how is it taught? How do emerging technologies impact design education? Which design methodologies effectively merge technique with theory? What are the latest innovations in teaching design history? How do new models of collaboration affect instruction? In what ways is interiors education able to anticipate future societal and environmental conditions, and what tools may be available for projecting into and speculating about possible futures? How may teaching serve as a productive critique of practice? Can interiors education serve as a form of activism? Contributors were invited to consider these questions that examine different aspects of interiors education from the point of view of the instructor.
While there is no shortage of publications that highlight cutting-edge research and practice in the realm of interiors, academic work by students under the guidance of their instructors and mentors rarely has the same visibility. This issue seeks to make evident the pedagogical approaches that shape interiors education, bringing to light both the process and its tangible outcomes. Contributions resulted in international representation and identified inherent qualities of the interior found in undergraduate and graduate education that include foundations to advanced design, theoretical questions, practical outcomes, curricular frameworks, and design informed by social and cultural cues. It became evident that these major themes were supported by pedagogical queries where collaboration, experimentation and traditional practice intersected with one another.
To look at the interior means to look at it with near-sighted vision because of the need to see materials, details and fabrication as a close-up, tactile sensibility. Essays in this issue reveal how the perception of near-sightedness aligns with full-scale interventions on the interior as a pedagogical strategy. At the same time, many of these approaches integrated collaboration as a means of getting to experimental, interdisciplinary, and conceptual approaches in design. From another perspective, social and cultural observations provide a far-sighted view for understanding the significance of how these topics influence the interior. We hope that with this theme issue, the content will illuminate the role of education – and educators as its primary agents – in the shaping of interiors from the ground up.
Interiors Editorial Team
Lois Weinthal, Editor-in-Chief
Igor Siddiqui, Associate Editor
Ro Spankie, Associate Editor
Ed Hollis, Book Editor
The Editorial team would like to thank the following Editorial Advisory Board members and colleagues for reviewing submissions.
Alessandro Ayuso, University of Westminster, UK
Mary Anne Beecher, Ohio State University, USA, Editorial Advisory Board
Graeme Brooker, Royal College of Art, UK, Editorial Advisory Board
Andy Campbell, University of Southern California, USA
Amy Campos, California College of the Arts, USA
Lynn Chalmers, University of Manitoba, Canada, Editorial Advisory Board
Courtney Coffman, Princeton University, USA
Annie Coggan, Pratt Institute, USA
Willem de Bruijn, Arts University Bournemouth, UK
Carola Ebert, Berlin International University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Molly Hunker, Syracuse University, USA
David Littlefield, University of the West of England, UK, Editorial Advisory Board
Kevin Moore, Auburn University, USA
Clay Odom, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Heather Peterson, Woodbury University, USA
Gennaro Postiglione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, Editorial Advisory Board
John Potvin, Concordia University, Canada, Editorial Advisory Board
Julieanna Preston, Massey University, New Zealand
Helene Renard, Virginia Tech, USA
Jonsara Ruth, Parsons School of Design, USA
Virginia San Fratello, San Jose State University, USA
Laura Scherling, Columbia University, Teachers College, USA
Deborah Schneiderman, Pratt Institute, USA
Alison Snyder, Pratt Institute, USA
Mark Taylor, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, Editorial Advisory Board
Jiangmei Wu, Indiana University, USA