Politicizing the interior
(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)
Chapter 8
Politicizing the interior
Liz Teston
Interior architectural theory, particularly as it pertains to the political, is a relatively underrepresented – yet growing – area of inquiry. Of the approximately 195 Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) accredited programs in North America, only fourteen percent grant diplomas in interior architecture. At an Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) conference held in 2009, the status of programs that teach the design of the interior environment in the United States and Canada and the use of the name “interior architecture” was debated. Interior architecture, interior design, and architecture journals continue to publish papers on the topic. Beyond a North American context, the debate over the nature of interior architecture continues, and with it, the potential for misunderstandings regarding territorial nomenclatures.
This chapter examines the role of politics in interior architecture through the work of Marc Augé and Guy Debord, an analysis of cultural theory borrowed from urban design and anthropology. By acknowledging the blurred edge between the territories of interior architecture and urban design, this chapter suggests that the interior is comprised of both spatial and political experiences. It recognizes that interior architecture is rooted in
the human experience of the interior volume. While the focus of this chapter is not professional legislation (the typical setting for defining disciplinary territories), a few definitions may help simplify classifications found here and set aside territorial questions about the varied design professions. This chapter focuses on place, space, and non-place as experiential drivers in contemporary interiors. Then, it examines how the Situationists International subverted conventional disciplinary research methods in the urban environment and how similar methods can enhance interior architecture. Finally, given that designers must appropriate political theories from allied fields, this chapter questions how interior architecture can stimulate new forms of community, political agency, and social consciousness across the disciplines.
Disciplinary geography: territories and frontiers
Interior architecture deals with designing places for people to occupy. By extension, those who design interiors focus on the human experience of the interior volume. Architecture is distinct from interior architecture due to its external and scalar characteristics. In addition, designers are more likely to employ formal exploration as a design strategy in architecture rather than in interior architecture where space is privileged. When we expand to the scale of the city, political and geometric forces often rule; the routes and paths of an urban grid meet the collective demands of designing for the public. If we step back to the scale of interior design, individual and aesthetic influences prevail, for instance, in the haptic textures, luminance, and ergonomic furnishings determining the characteristics of a reading nook.
It is possible, of course, for urban design to take on an individual, experiential quality and for the interior to adopt a politicized spatial condition. Some of the most innovative design work traverses the territorial membrane of these disciplines. Regardless, interior architecture assumes the importance of the human experience in the interior volume – how people activate space or how space activates people. A brief review of design award jury comments illustrates these varied disciplinary identities in the public
arena. The AIA Interior Architecture Award–winning Beats by Dre Headquarters by Bestor Architecture, for example, was described as “warm and inviting – a place where we would like to work. The design also seems to energize the staff in a relaxed atmosphere.”3 The account of IMG’s Worldwide Offices by Studios Architecture in Interior Design magazine’s “Best of Year” issue focused on materiality and furnishings. It describes “restored mosaic and terrazzo flooring that could serve as both background and counterpoint to an ultra contemporary museum – white walls and neutral-toned furnishings.”4 The AIA jurors valued the Beats by Dre Headquarters’ spatial experience. The Interior Design magazine critics emphasized the placemaking aesthetics of the IMG Worldwide Offices.
Having defined both of these territories, we may now traverse them. A frontier is the outer limits or boundaries of a country, territory, or discipline. It could easily be misconstrued as a defined edge (Figure 8.1), but a frontier is, in fact, a liminal zone; it has thickness. We often assume there is a hard line between each design discipline, but in reality the defined edge is imaginary. Designing interior places relies on current conditions within the existing building and is contingent upon the surrounding context. Systematically designing interiors that focus only on aesthetic and individual phenomena feeds a restrictive notion of boundaries. Likewise, urban design, which dedicates itself primarily to political and geometric forces, supports the illusion of a disciplinary edge. Each discipline should make use of the broader frontiers of its neighbors. As Terry Meade has commented, interior designers often overlook critical discussions about the sociopolitical issues occurring in the built environment.5 This circumstance has arisen because most interior spaces are private and not a part of the commons. Designers may feel that they are absolved from allegiance to meeting the collective demands of the public, but the discipline is neglecting a varied and stimulating discourse. This inattention to the concerns of urban society is a cavity in everyday design practice. As such, the theoretical inquiry into collective memory and the politics of inclusion and their role in the built interior are not as prevalent in contemporary interior architectural theory as in other design disciplines. To begin incorporating them into
interior architectural theory, we must appropriate perspectives from urban design and anthropology. Acknowledging the politics of the interior through the lens of other disciplines will enhance both interior architectural theory and practice.
Figure 8.1 Diagram depicting related design disciplines and territorial frontiers. Hatched zones represent interior architecture, architecture, and the urban design. Overlapping areas represent opportunities for appropriation between the disciplines (e.g., political-spatial meets individual-experiential). Dotted zones represent allied fields not addressed in this chapter.
Cultural geography: place, space, and non-place
Emotions are individual feelings produced by internal provocations like memories or shared external stimuli, such as catharsis or euphoria at a public performance. Emotions drive our actions, our creative work, and the way we perceive designed places. Our state of mind has a distinct social character, caused by and occurring within social situations. There are societal norms for emotional and experiential responses to situations, places, and interactions. The emotional culture of a people embodies and communicates the principles of that society. Emotional culture is a reflection of our group identity. Collectively, our memories and emotions read space through a lens that is unified by a culture – be it generational, geographical, or otherwise. The shared constitutional order of the urban fabric persists while the built environment is obliterated, reimagined, and revered. The collective memory remains. Society forms the outer layer of the spatial public realm. There is an implicit agreement, a social contract, which recognizes the role of collectivity within that framework. Mundane daily activities (the structure of our lives) avert our eyes from seeing the impact of society on the city. By studying and valuing familiar moments in everyday life, we understand how humanity transforms the design of interiors.
In his philosophy of place and space, Michel de Certeau, a French Jesuit priest and scholar, describes space as an area that is stimulated by people. He describes place as an area of stasis, where everything is ordered, identifiable, and codified, and anthropological space as an experiential place within a contextual setting. Marc Augé expands his theory of place as a derivative of de Certeau’s anthropological spaces. Unlike de Certeau, he sees place and space as a dialectic and makes a distinction between the two. His interpretation of place deposits layers of events, histories, and cultures to reinforce the inertia of place. He describes space as abstract – occupied by people, a physical void, or a time interval. Interior architectural theory
should consider space in terms of a people-activated zone made by human interaction. Two people initially form a space, and then expand to a group, followed by relation to the built environment, the city, and ultimately, society. We transform a place into space by our interaction with each other, with buildings, and with the city. We identify our perception of space through these interactions, yet begin with the foundation of our collective memory. Design reveals the importance of everyday life and intimate moments within the built environment. Place forms our early memories.
By extension, Augé’s non-place is characterized as a postmodern, generic space occupied by people for a predetermined reason (Figure 8.2). For example, people relate to shopping malls and airports in a detached, solitary manner. Non-places take our collective identity and twist it into a heterotopic, transactional experience. The question remains, how do people activate the space of a non-place, and how subjective is their experience? In non-places, how much separation is there between Augé’s objective conditions of space and the subjective experiences of place? What is the phenomenology of the non-place?
We could speculate that non-places allow for experiences of psychological interiority. The contemporary physical experience of space is less subjective, thus allowing for greater introspection and the development of an internal narrative. Society’s obsession with social networking and uninterrupted engagement with online media has reinforced this condition of postmodern interiority in the built environment. In light of this, what is the phenomenology of physical places when one’s identity exists in a smartphone? Perhaps due to this open-sourced global connectivity, people are becoming even more consumed with how cultural and political identities define themselves, and therefore, have grown more political about the near environment. Conversely, an online identity may not be an everyday identity, but a character projected to others. Online, people represent their curated identity. Regardless, the spatial identity of society is changing due to the postmodern condition. Further definition of the politics of the interior is needed to enhance contemporary design scholarship.
In reading space and understanding non-place in the context of place, we must speculate on the everyday. Many cultural theorists elevate the micro-subversions of the everyday as a diversion from the monotony of the mundane. Consider the defiant pleasure you might experience in covertly stealing shampoo from a business hotel, or the sense of control that you feel in screening your phone calls. This way of understanding the everyday, or quotidian routine of life, brings about micro-subversive actions that drive away boredom. Likewise, the commodity consumption of everyday material culture emits a signal representing our chosen identity. In this model, using fashion, design, and online identities, we must project ourselves as unique so as to undermine the banality of everyday life. Both of these approaches to consumerism imply that everyday life is dull, yet by researching the commonplace we elevate it. We lift it up in the same way that cultural theorists have elevated micro-subversions and material culture. Design is embedded in the everyday and has intrinsic value. Studying the aesthetics of the mundane and non-place enhances the development of interior architectural theory. It reveals that informal actions have value: everyday objects, underserved populations, and modestly detailed buildings.
By analyzing the everyday, we can see the authenticity and the capacity of “placeness” in the most ordinary of non-places.
Urban geography: political and experiential
To understand politics and the everyday, we should consider the work of the Situationists International. Members Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, and Constant Nieuwenhuys were influenced by Dada and Surrealism. They would derive (drift) through the city by arranging experiential, unplanned (and often alcohol-fueled) multi-day journeys. These dérives were used to question the nature of urbanism, consumerism, and the individual. Through psychogeography, the Situationists were attempting to take urbanism and expose its individual, experiential qualities rather than aspects of political or geometric structure. Debord described psychogeography as an understanding of the “precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” It was conceived to expose the means by which conventional urban design controls everyday life and the ways in which this control can be exposed and subverted. For the next few years, the Situationists created political art responding to these issues (Figure 8.3). Public housing developments were of particular concern, and they suggested that the top-down design approach stifled psychogeographic aspects of the city and individual creativity. It removed the artist from the environment of the city and prioritized the rationale of the city grid over the urban experience.
The work of the Situationists is particularly compelling within the context of political interior architecture, because it provides a model for subversion of conventional urban design. While still being political and concerned with spaces of movement, it explores the everyday city from an experiential and personal standpoint. To enhance the political and spatial
motivations of interior architecture, we must heighten our awareness of the everyday interior environment. Intimacy, memories, and emotions help us acknowledge our humanity and understand place. Each person has value. Each experience or memory is significant because it contains the bits that make up a person. In light of this emphasis on the individual, how can interior architecture stimulate new forms of community, political agency, and social consciousness? In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the heels of World War II, the international community created the document to assure that the atrocities and suppression of that war were not repeated. The thirty articles proclaimed that all humans had unassailable rights or liberties that cannot be determined or oppressed by a governmental state. Articles 25(1) and 27(1) describe the right of each person to health, housing, community, and the arts:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
By examining the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we understand that everyone matters and each person should be able to access well-designed places and experiences. Interiors shape lives in the most fundamental and personal way. The built environment is a part of our collective memory, whether canonical or mundane. Memory and cultural identity are inextricably linked. That concept gives everyday objects, like a recycling center or a gallon of milk, a design status that is not always
initially evident. Everything is designed and has value. As designers, we have the responsibility to promote access to design as a basic human right.
Through recognition of the occupiable threshold on the periphery of interior and urban territories, we uncover the frontier unifying these disciplines. We acknowledge the interior as both spatial and political, and that interior architecture concerns itself primarily with the human experience of the interior volume. Theoretical inquiry into collective memory, the politics of inclusion and its role in the built environment, can reposition the role of the interior in the volatile climate of contemporary design. There are several potential trajectories for future research into politicizing the interior: the conflict between material culture and sustainability, issues of parity in space-related civil rights acts, the impact of corporate design standards on experience and non-place, and the influence of pop culture and lowbrow design in interiors. These cultural and political issues have implications for interior architecture and beyond as the theoretical dialog surrounding the field develops. Recent symposia and lectures exploring the politics of the built environment may reveal a growing interest in this area. All design disciplines, including interior architecture, should exploit the built environment’s conventional frontiers to appropriate perspectives surrounding collective memory, the politics of inclusion, and the role of design in everyday places.
Notes
- “Accredited Programs”, Council for Interior Design Accreditation, www.accredit-id.org/accredited-programs (calculated based on info accessed on September 13, 2017).
- Allison Carll White, “What’s in a Name? Interior Design and/or Interior Architecture: The Discussion Continues”, Journal of Interior Design 35, no. 1 (2009): x–xviii.
- “2015 Recipient | Institute Honor Awards for Interior Architecture”, American Institute of Architects, 2015, www.aia.org/practicing/awards/2015/interior-architecture/beats-by-dre.
- “2014 BOY Winner: Fashion Office”, Interior Design, 30 January 2015, www.interiordesign.net/projects/detail/2516-2014-boy-winner-fashion-office.
5 Terry Meade, “Interior Design, a Political Discipline”, in Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design, ed. Graeme Brooker and Lois Weinthal (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), pp. 394–403.
6 Guobin Yang, “Emotional Events and the Transformation of Collective Action: The Chinese Student Movement”, in Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Helena Flam and Debra King (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 79–98.
7 Uta Staiger and Henriette Steiner, introduction to Memory Culture and the Contemporary City, ed. Uta Staiger, Henriette Steiner, and Andrew Webber (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 1–13.
8 Michel de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).
9 Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (New York: Verso Books, 1995).
10 Ian Buchanan, “Non-Places: Space in the Age of Supermodernity”, Social Semiotics 9, no. 3 (1999): 393–398.
11 Meade, “Interior Design, a Political Discipline”, pp. 394–403.
12 Alexander H. Jordan, Benoit Monin, Carol S. Dweck, Benjamin J. Lovett, Oliver P. John, and James J. Gross, “Misery Has More Company Than People Think: Underestimating the Prevalence of Others’ Negative Emotions”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, no. 1 (2011): 120–135.
13 Joe Moran, Reading the Everyday (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 1–28.
14 John Fiske, Reading the Popular (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1989), p. 65.
15 Susan Willis, Primer for Daily Life (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 175.
16 Guy Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”, in Situationists International Anthology, trans. and ed. Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), pp. 23–27.
17 Sadie Plant, Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 58.
18 Libero Andreotti, introduction to Theory of the Dérive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, ed. Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona /Actar, 1996), pp. 7–9.
19 “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, The United Nations, 10 December 1948, www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.
20 Aldo Rossi, Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984), pp. 130–131.
21 For recent symposia and lectures refer to: Architecture Exchange Symposium at the Architectural Association, “How Is Architecture Political?”, Online Video: 4:04:12, 2014, www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?id=2702; or Mitchell Lecture Series at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Urtzi Grau: Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects”, Online Video: 1:29:40, 2015, https://saic.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f158c521-1969-4619-8f0e-1e8d860e3654; or Narratives and Design Studies Symposium: A Task of Translation at School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons, “Narratives of Agency”, Online Video: 1:14:38, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2AMXZnWia0.
