(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 46

Interiors as global constructs

Framing culture and design discourses in a world of movement

Tasoulla Hadjiyanni

At a time when ideas, people, and products move around the globe at unprecedented speeds and scales, interior architecture theory is called on to explore questions and practices that extend beyond the comfortable and the familiar. Instead, they allow for the exposure of “differences” and “biases,” translating into mediums for dialogues around the role of design in processes that can create marginalization and inequality. Exploring how interiors inform life in a world of movement adds new layers to our understanding of what it means to be human and complicates the questions scholars and designers need to be asking. In what ways does movement change the human experience of space and place? How are interiors impacting meaning-making processes? What are the implications of this understanding for theory development and how it can translate to education, policy, and practice? Answering these questions takes an interdisciplinary approach, one where design-related discourses are fused

with knowledge from fields such as anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, geography, and gender/ethnic studies.

Globalization discourses are tied to interiors in ways that are much more complex and difficult to untangle than those dictated by the present scholarship on design and culture. Migration, displacement, transnationalism, and multiculturalism create an urgent call to action that is partly linked to current inequalities experienced by those whose lives are enmeshed in political, economic, and social systems that often conflict with and negate one another. My research with refugees, new immigrants, and minority populations brought to the forefront the constraints faced by many in creating a supportive home environment, one where individuals and families can practice cherished traditions, from cooking favorite foods to hosting friends and relatives and passing down to the next generation long-standing religious rituals (Figure 46.1). Coming from lower socioeconomic strata and lacking English proficiency, many new immigrants to the United States are often limited to menial and low-paying jobs. Over one-third of all Mexicans, for example, have incomes that fall below the poverty level, compared to 13% of the total United States’ population, which can limit their choices of where and how to live.

Income inequality is accompanied by health disparities. The example of Minnesota, one of the healthiest states in the nation, illustrates this point. The state faces some of the greatest disparities in health status and incidence of chronic disease between populations of color and whites. Health disparities have been linked to a host of factors, including housing conditions and access to healthy foods. As projections show that in 2040 almost half of Minnesota’s population is expected to be people of color (and close to half of the growth in the state’s population is expected to come from international immigrants), the need to delve deeper into exploring the intersections of design and culture has never been more crucial.

In this global era, the question that confronts us is not whether interiors matter but how they matter. Interiors’ fluid character manifests itself as a social, economic, cultural, or political construct that changes and evolves in response to fluctuating borders, a multiplicity of identities, and

varying layers of sense of belonging. Interiors can be positioned as what Stuart Hall calls “a form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak.” From within this theorization, Mexican traditional patterns, colors, and motifs that adorn interior walls become an opportunity for dialogues around the process by which a color palette came to be associated with Mexicans – and the implications of that association (Figure 46.2). Designs that allow room for questioning how a group is defined move away from the paradigm of “culture” as static and isolated, provide a forum for the sociopolitical context in which “culture” is constructed to emerge, and allow issues such as colonization, globalization, immigration, and power differentials to come to the surface. I have called this line of work Culturally Sensitive Design (CSD), design that is characterized by flexibility and adaptability and that recognizes the multiplicity of ways by which people construct meaning in life.

When it comes to theorizing the conundrum of how culture and design relate in a world of movement, objectives can vary along what can be divergent lines: from simplistic ones, such as those that conceive of interiors as place and time-bound, to ones where interiors are not constructed only

out of immediate, visible, physical context and characteristics but as global constructs; where notions such as culture, identity, race, history, gender, and otherness are negotiated and produced. Conceiving of interiors as global constructs allows room for considering the multiplicity of constraints by which culture can play out in the global era. As noted by Warnier, “Being a subject is not primarily being what one chooses to be, but constructing one’s drives in a material world and gaining access to the moral law in one’s relationship to others, under a number of constraints.” Theories on interiors must provide frameworks through which scholars, practitioners, students, and policy makers can navigate an interconnected global reality and feel competent and secure enough to identify problems and their consequences, as well as be empowered to take responsibility or action.

In this chapter, I draw from my experience with CSD and propose that the design implications of movement will never be fully understood unless theorizations of interiors broaden understandings of how design and culture intersect, allow for a renewed sense of responsibility on the part of designers, and expand the foci of design. As lenses that inform the direction of dialogues and debates, these theories empower designers to complicate the questions they are asking, better preparing them to address the challenges posed by the cultural complexities of the twenty-first century.

How do culture and design relate?

Fields such as anthropology and sociology have long struggled with defining culture and how it should be understood. Early attempts saw culture as an “essence,” and scholars focused on exploring the “integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society.” Essentialists argued that there is truly something “authentic” about each culture, and this something is tangible and identifiable, made up of separate and distinct elements. Interiors, along with food, dress, religion, social relations, music, dance, etc. were mediums through which to understand, and in turn, relate diverse ways of living. Overall form, spatial layouts, decorative patterns, activities supported, size of spaces, lighting

levels, material choices, construction techniques, and symbolic meanings were aspects of interiors that shone a light on “difference.”

In contrast, constructivists point to such conceptions of culture as static and monolithic, ones that do not capture the complex, multidimensional, hybrid, dynamic, intertwining, and ever-changing facets of culture that characterize border crossings and modernization processes. In Culture & Truth, Renato Rosaldo calls for shifting discourses from defining culture to understanding how culture is constructed and produced. Moving from the singular to the plural, and from the static to the dynamic, acknowledges the many ways to belong – the multiple lenses from which one can choose to view the world. Gupta and Ferguson situate these explorations in context and argue for the importance of “exploring the processes of production” of difference in a world of culturally, socially, and economically interconnected and independent spaces.” Deciphering how interior spatialities relate to race, gender, and class power dynamics dissolves obscurity around the production of inequality and marginalization.

Part of the challenge to anyone embarking on this journey is navigating two dominant narratives: assimilation versus resistance, and everything in between. The assimilation narrative operates on the premise that soon enough, defining elements of new immigrants’ cultural identities such as language, religion, and food will blend into the American melting pot. Investing in research and understanding of differences is not a worthwhile endeavor. In contrast, the resistance paradigm draws energy from such facts as the over 62 million people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home. This scenario conceives of homes as sites of resistance from mainstream values and ideals; private spatialities that enable immigrants and minorities to retain and nourish their sense of difference and construct a transnational identity.

The bottom line is that theorizations that account for plurality, the multiplicity of ways by which an individual or a collective can belong, matter. Purposeful theories are not crafted in vain; they impact lives and well-being as well as the choice of who one can become. People have agency and choose which aspects of their lives to change and how. In many cases,

though, choices can be bounded by limitations brought forward by the built environment, and people may find themselves without the choice to appropriate their homes to support their way of life, facing undue stress and feelings of disconnect. Theories that build on the dynamic nature of culture can translate into retail interiors that boost wide aisles to accommodate large, extended families with children and elders; affordable housing that uses materials that can withstand mold and moisture in bathrooms and, therefore, are conducive to the washing ritual of devoted Muslim residents who cleanse before their daily prayers; and public libraries that include signs in diverse languages to attract and relate to a diverse population.

In policymaking, such theorizations can prompt mayors, lawmakers, and advocates to debate around how to develop decision-making processes that include multiple voices and perspectives and how to foster and nourish the capabilities embedded in all community members. CSD is closely linked to the Capabilities Approach, aligning with a shift in policymaking that includes measures of quality of life for a nation’s residents among the indexes of prosperity, rather than relying simply on economic indicators such as the GDP. As a social justice theory, the Capabilities Approach asks:

What is each person able to do and to be? In other words, the approach takes each person as an end, asking not just about the total or average well-being but about the opportunities available to each person. It is focused on choice or freedom, holding that the crucial good societies should be promoting for their people is a set of opportunities, or substantial freedoms, which people then may or may not exercise in action: the choice is theirs.

Moving beyond the “us” versus “them” framework, theorizations of global interiors recognize that everyone benefits when resources, improvements, and opportunities are spread throughout all areas of a region. This brings us to the next question of understanding the role of designers.

What is the role of designers?

Plunged into the murky waters of difference while teaching interior design studios on culturally sensitive housing, I confronted what seemed to be unanswerable questions: What is a designer to do when religion enters the picture in housing supported by federal funds in a secular country? How can one handle values that diverge from the ones adopted by the mainstream, such as women socializing separately from men? Should and could designers become health advocates, and what kind of training would that require? The lived experiences of my Hmong, Somali, Mexican, Ojibwe, and African American interviewees exposed the political and ideological deficiencies of current design theorizing. Translating Hall’s call for “places from which to speak” into conceptual diagrams and programmatic guidelines for residential environments within an urban setting felt overwhelming to students with limited exposure to “otherness.” Theories that reposition the role of designers as central to the question of what it means to be can establish interiors as mediums for social justice and broaden the scope of interior design education and practice.

Writing over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle can pave the way for how to think about this topic. Aristotle understood happiness as an activity, in fact, the end of all activities. In Book I of The Nicomachean Ethics, he defined happiness as “a virtuous activity of the soul” and prompted all students of politics to study the soul. Happiness is one of the sacred and unalienable rights noted in the Declaration of Independence. What can prompt designers of interiors to operate with happiness as a goal in mind? How would one study the soul and in what ways could those lessons infuse themselves in the design of interior spaces? Can interiors nudge people toward virtuous activities, ones that care for the soul, and if so, how? Who decides what is good and how could one know that something is virtuous?

Interiors have long been reified as spaces for varying activities, from nourishing one’s body in a residential kitchen to forging collaborations in the workplace. Global interiors boost additional qualities. They are the sites from where global citizens transcend spatial and temporal boundaries,

putting in place a process through which their claims of interior spaces become performances that showcase their right to happiness. A global modality problematizes how interiors relate to happiness at a time when “everyone’s problems are everyone else’s.” Pico Iyer situates discourses on globalism within the notion of the soul – the global soul – “characterized by the fact of falling between all categories.” Such theorizations further broaden the questions designers can be asking: Whose soul are we talking about, and who might be left out? How are “categories” formed and sustained, and what role do interiors play in the process? What are the implications of “falling between” for interiors, which are fixed spatialities, bounded by walls, floors, and ceilings?

Appiah’s cosmopolitanism brings forward two specific characteristics that are crucial in the formation of a “citizen of the world” and for anyone studying the soul: first, feeling an obligation to others, and second, taking interest in the lives of others and what gives those lives significance. Theorizations around the role of designers in a world of movement must also encompass explorations of the characteristics that must be intentionally fostered for the creation of global interiors. Once again, the questions multiply: who is the “other”? What kind of skills and educational preparation would designers need to embark on this journey of understanding the “other”? How does one demonstrate “interest” and what are the ways by which this demonstrated interest can be supported and sustained?

Designers who recognize what it means to “fall between” consider the impact of the built environment on the construction of marginalization and difference – from the foods one can eat, to the relationships one can form, and aspirations for the future. As a result, designers of global interiors would benefit from theoretical frameworks that examine decision-making processes and who gets to sit around the table; they better understand how partnerships and synergies are fostered with others who share similar goals, consider how knowledge of diverse perspectives and needs is formed and disseminated, and question how design can be used to break down barriers

and stereotypes. From within this expanded role of designers, globalism implies responsibility for all – including those once invisible.

Who are the users of interiors?

Theorizations around interiors as global constructs must also reconsider the relationship between space and body. In much of design research, the body is equated with the user – the patient in the hospital, the student in the classroom, the employee in the workplace. How would designing interiors change if users included the non-visible, those living in the shadows, such as youth caught in trafficking or undocumented immigrants? What are the implications of design parameters such as surveillance, both physical and technological, for those who live on the margins of society? How can designers be exposed to the plight of the invisible, and in what ways can these experiences be used to rethink current pedagogies and practices?

Sexually exploited youth are not the type of user one would typically think about when talking about hotel and shopping mall interiors. A global industry of monumental proportions, trafficking operates by keeping victims on the move, across borders, states, neighborhoods, and buildings. An estimated 27 million people, mostly girls and women, are trafficked each year globally, and in Minnesota alone, close to 250 teens are sold an average of five times a day. Poverty, low educational attainment, community and interpersonal violence, high rates of alcohol-related deaths and suicide, poor physical health, and corroded family and community relationships, as well as the generational and historical trauma experienced by marginalized groups, are partly to blame.[21] Interiors associated with trafficking include places where youth are recruited (schools, malls), places where ads are posted online (coffee shops, local libraries), places used by purchasers to meet victims (houses, hotels, massage parlors, gas stations), and places where victims can transition (shelters, homeless youth centers) (Figure 46.3).[22]

The rights associated with citizenship are another notion that global interiors are called to interrogate. An estimated 12 million people

currently live in the United States without legal documentation, as many as half of whom are Mexicans. Often labeled “undocumented” or “illegal,” these immigrants experience additional challenges in finding a new place to call home and creating a sense of belonging. Much of their experience of interiors is informed by absence, not presence, as families are divided, loved ones are left behind. Reframing interiors from within the absence paradigm recognizes spaces as transbodied, and the body that dwells is partly informed by other bodies and experiences, some of which are at the same location (physically present) and others are apart (physically absent).23

An expanded definition of users transforms interiors into vehicles for further problematizing narratives around difference. Scholarship that searches for connections between societal challenges and theoretical understandings can solidify the contributions of interior architecture to human well-being.

Unraveling the globality of interiors requires alternative means of knowing and engaging communities that designers have not always been

well practiced in. Stories that are not typically part of historical canon must be included in interrogations of how interiorities are constructed and endowed with meaning.\textsuperscript{24} Globality in a world of movement implies theories that recognize social inequalities as partly spatially constructed through interiors, and therefore opportunities for intervention abound. Interiors that account for the junctures of body and mind, here and there, presence and absence, the visible and the invisible, can become spatialities endowed with complicated identities that are validated and spatially supported.

Notes

1 My cross-cultural study of differences in housing needs includes the experiences of Hmong, Somali, Mexicans, Native Americans, and African Americans. See examples of papers: Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, “Bounded Choices – Somali Women Constructing Difference in Minnesota Housing”, \textit{Journal of Interior Design} 32, no. 2 (2007): 17–27; Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, “Transbodied Spaces: The Home Experiences of Undocumented Mexicans in Minnesota”, \textit{Space and Culture} 18, no. 1 (2015): 81–97.

2 To begin to understand the adjustment issues faced by many new immigrants, see Nicholas De Genova, \textit{Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago} (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Alma Garcia, \textit{The Mexican Americans} (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).

3 Good starting points for those interested in health disparities are the following: Craig Helmstetter, Susan Brower and Andi Egbert, “The Unequal Distribution of Health in the Twin Cities”, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Saint Paul, MN, October 2010, \textit{www.wilder.org/Wilder-Research/Publications/Studies/Health%20Inequities%20in%20the%20Twin%20Cities/The%20Unequal%20Distribution%20of%20Health%20in%20the%20Twin%20Cities%202010,%20Full%20Report.pdf} (accessed 8 April 2012); “Priority Health Areas of the Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative”, Minnesota Department of Health, \textit{http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/che/ehdi/priority.html} (accessed 13 September 2017).

4 “What Lies Ahead: Population, Household and Employment Forecasts to 2040”, Metropolitan Council, Saint Paul, MN, April 2012,

5 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), p. 237. Hall’s theoretical framework on how the cinema can position Black Caribbean identity can be employed to guide architectural and design responses to immigration and displacement.

6 An example of how to move in this direction can be found in Tasoulla Hadjiyanni and Kristin Helle, “Kitchens as Cultural Mediums – the Food Experiences of Mexican Immigrants in Minnesota”, Housing and Society Special Issue on Kitchens and Baths 35, no. 2 (2008): 97–116.

7 Jean Pierre Warnier, “A Praxeological Approach to Subjectivation in a Material World”, Journal of Material Culture 6, no. 1 (2001): 12.

8 E. Adamson Hoebel, Anthropology: The Study of Man, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), p. 6.

9 Examples of writings that use a constructivist perspective and focus on the variable and dynamic nature of culture include Angelika Bammer, Displacements – Cultural Identities in Question (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Andrew Shryock and Nabeel Abraham, “On Margins and Mainstreams”, in Arab Detroit – From Margin to Mainstream, ed. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000), pp. 15–35.

10 A seminal piece that broadens how culture is understood and approached is Renato Rosaldo’s, Culture & Truth – the Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1989).

11 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference” Cultural Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1992): 14.

12 Language is one indicator of culture, ethnicity, and difference and in the U.S., 20.1% of 311,591,917 people speak a language other than English in the home. http://quickfacts.census.gov/

13 bell hooks and Amalia Mesa-Bains, Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticisms (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006); see, for example: Hadjiyanni, “Transbodied Spaces”, pp. 81–97; Setha Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003).

14 An example of the challenges faced by veiled Somali women can be found in Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, “Bounded Choices”, pp. 17–27; for more on undocumented immigrants see Hadjiyanni, “Transbodied Spaces”, pp. 81–97.

15 Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 18.

16 Innovative pedagogies can be used to expose students to the complexity of cultural discourses. As an example, see Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, “Beginning With Concept – Deconstructing the Complexity of ‘Culture’ Through Art in Design Education”, International Journal of Education through Art 10, no. 1 (2014): 23–39.

17 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 18.

18 Pico Iyer, The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), p. 34.

19 Ibid., The Global Soul, p. 23.

20 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006).

21 The high numbers of Native American youth caught in trafficking are partly explained by these factors in Alexandra Pierce, “Shattered Hearts: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of American Indian Women and Girls in Minnesota”, The Minnesota American Indian Women’s Resource Center, Minneapolis, MN, August 2009, www.indianlaw.org/sites/default/files/shattered%20hearts%20report.pdf (accessed 10 May 2015).

22 To learn more about the “placeness” of trafficking and how designers can be involved, see Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, Melanie Povlitzki, and Hannah Preble, “The Placeness of Sex Trafficking – Instilling Consciousness Through Minnesota’s Experience”, Journal of Interior Design: Special Issue on Interior Design Collaboration 39, no. 1 (2014): 1–16.

23 Hadjiyanni, “Transbodied Spaces”, pp. 81–97.

24 Community-engaged scholarship and teaching are means to expand designers’ awareness of what matters and why. See Mallika Bose, Paula Horrigan, Cheryl Doble, and Sigmund Shipp, Community Matters: Service-Learning in Engaged Design and Planning (New York: Routledge, 2014).