Interiors as Global Constructs

Definition

Interiors as global constructs is Hadjiyanni's theorization of the interior for a world of movement: interiors are to be understood "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." The alternative — conceiving of interiors as "place and time-bound" — is the simplistic objective the theorization must exceed. The concept's positive form: "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." The founding question is not the familiar "do interiors matter" but: "In this global era, the question that confronts us is not whether interiors matter but how they matter."

The concept does two things at once. It is a scale claim — the interior's causes and effects extend beyond its walls to fluctuating borders, multiplicity of identities, and varying layers of belonging ("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"). And it is an ontology claim — the interior as social, economic, cultural, or political construct: an entity that "changes and evolves" rather than a given, positioned through Stuart Hall's representation thesis as "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." Via Warnier, the construct's subjects are themselves materially constrained: "Being a subject is not primarily being what one chooses to be, but constructing one's drives in a material world… under a number of constraints."

Key Thinkers

• Tasoulla Hadjiyanni — the concept's author: interiors as global constructs theorized through Culturally Sensitive Design research with Hmong, Somali, Mexican, Ojibwe, and African American communities in Minnesota.
• Stuart Hall — the representation thesis the concept is positioned within: interiors as "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" (Cultural Identity and Diaspora, 1990, p. 237); not yet paged (see log).
• Jean Pierre Warnier — the subjectivation-under-constraints frame: "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" (2001, p. 12); not yet paged (see log).
• Renato Rosaldo, Akhil Gupta & James Ferguson — the constructivist culture frame: shift "from defining culture to understanding how culture is constructed and produced" (Rosaldo); "exploring the processes of production" of difference (Gupta & Ferguson); not yet paged (see log).

Related Concepts

• Culturally Sensitive Design — the concept's research programme: flexibility and adaptability recognizing the multiplicity of ways people construct meaning.
• Transbodied Space — the concept's body-ontological consequence: interiors inhabited by physically present and physically absent bodies alike.
• Bounded Choices — the concept's political constraint: when the built environment forecloses the choices the construct should enable.
• Global Soul — the user condition the concept addresses: the global soul "falling between all categories" against interiors that are "fixed spatialities."
• Space of Flows — the movement thesis' architectural cousin: Borden's flow-space of people-events against object-spatiality; Hadjiyanni adds the immigrant and refugee as the flow's human content.
• Boundaries — the concept's border condition: interiors changing "in response to fluctuating borders" — the boundary that moves beneath the fixed room.
• Postcolonial Identity — the institutional counterpart: where Stokes-Rees's museum constructs national identity, Hadjiyanni's construct constructs immigrant and minority subjectivity.
• Cultural Constructivism — the account of culture the concept presupposes: culture as constructed and produced, not essential.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Interiors as global constructs (Hadjiyanni 2018) — the founding source: the "not whether interiors matter but how" question; the fluid character as social/economic/cultural/political construct responding to "fluctuating borders, a multiplicity of identities, and varying layers of sense of belonging"; the Hall representation positioning; the divergent theorizing objectives (place/time-bound vs global constructs).

Open Questions

• Is "global construct" a scale claim (the interior's determinants reach beyond its physical context) or an ontology claim (the interior is a construct rather than a container)? The chapter's formulations support both.
• How does the global construct relate to Borden's space of flows and Castells's homonymous network concept — three "global" spatialities (movement, network, construct) in need of reconciliation?
• Campos's territory is "a defined, but placeless, field of action" — the interior detached from place. Is Hadjiyanni's global construct the same thesis from the user side (the user detached from the interior's place), and where do the two accounts meet?
• If interiors are constructs "where notions such as culture, identity, race, history, gender, and otherness are negotiated and produced," what methodology reads a given interior's construction — and is CSD's community-engaged method that reading practice?