Liberated Interior

Definition

The liberated interior is Amy Campos's term for the interior freed from its location — an interior condition "that migrates from place to place," which the chapter defines as the inversion of the nineteenth-century territorial idea: "Liberated interiors, like the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant and the Migrant Interior project, suggest an inversion of the nineteenth-century territorial idea, allowing the interior to be defined as an inhabited – if placeless – territory." Its historical lineage runs through three cases. (1) The tapestry: prized, portable, and installed quickly, it served both as insulation and "as equally valuable tools for indicating dominion and power as rulers traveled from one location to another" — "Wherever their owners took them, tapestries marked territory" — and "It was the mobility of the tapestries that rendered them strategically more valuable, precisely as a result of their itinerant quality." (2) The camouflaged Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant: an entire decoy suburb ("paper thin fake houses, streets with rubber cars… even laundry lines complete with drying clothes") built on a scrim roof so that "Interiority exists independent of territory as a located condition. The plant is a hidden, placeless island within an intentionally inconsequential landscape," its interior "liberated from place, suggesting a potential for it to exist in any location or no location." (3) The Migrant Interior residence: designed for clients who "knew that the place they inhabited would likely change before the things they put in that space would" — "The interior as a set of inhabitable elements… defined a much more permanent sense of place than the architecture or location – very much like the example of the tapestry," delivered as "a plan of action, a designed timeline for use and change from location to location," where "Fixed location is seen here as a changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition."

The concept's contemporary driver is demographic: "Recent and ongoing global crises in resource scarcity, skilled labor, climate change, and shifting industries have resulted in mass migrations of markets, resources, and people. In the United States, people relocate frequently at an average of every five to seven years over the course of their lifetimes. The ability for the liberated interior to move redefines territorial occupation as a materially and culturally transient condition." The liberated interior is thus the wiki's counter-case to both Grosz's enframing thesis (no inside without a fixed demarcation — here the demarcation is portable or performative) and Augé's non-place (placelessness as impersonal disconnection — here placelessness is inhabited: an interior more durable than the places it occupies). It is distinct from the transient interior: the liberated interior changes location; the transient interior multiplies conditions within one location.

Key Thinkers

• Amy Campos — the concept's author: the tapestry–decoy–Migrant Interior lineage of the interior "liberated from place," and the redefinition of "territorial occupation as a materially and culturally transient condition" (2018).
• Michael Webb — the precedent: the portable, vehicular interior of the Cushicle/Suitaloon lineage and the Drive-in House — the interior as the occupant's carried environment rather than the building's fixed room. See drive-in-house.
• Gilles Deleuze (with Félix Guattari) — the theoretical frame: deterritorialisation and the "home value" that lets any object stand for lost territory — the glass-sphere field as "a long-lasting investment in their notion of home because of its mobility." See deterritorialisation.
• (Discussed in the source, not yet paged — see log: Colonel John F. Ohmer, the WWII camouflage program's author; Anna G. Bennett, Five Centuries of Tapestries, the chapter's tapestry source.)

Related Concepts

• Territory — the concept the liberated interior reworks: territory no longer located, but "an inhabited – if placeless – territory."
• Territorial Transience — the sibling condition: mobility between locations (liberated) vs simultaneity within one location (transient).
• Non-Places — the negative image: Augé's placeless spaces are "inherently impersonal and impermanent"; Campos's placeless interior is the inhabited revaluation of the same condition.
• Deterritorialisation — the process the liberated interior performs: occupation detached from fixed place, re-territorializing at each deployment.
• Interiority — what survives the move: "Interiority exists independent of territory as a located condition" — innerness no longer anchored to a located shell.
• Dwelling — the stake: the Migrant Interior's inhabitable elements "defined a much more permanent sense of place than the architecture or location" — nomadic dwelling against the rooted house.
• Flexible Interior — the kit of parts that makes liberation logistical: components "transferrable to any new space."
• Boundaries — the carried boundary: the tapestry as a territorial marker that travels with its owner.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Territory and inhabitation (Campos 2018) — the source: the tapestry's itinerant dominion ("Wherever their owners took them, tapestries marked territory"; "a virtual window to another highly embellished narrative territory"); the Lockheed decoy ("a hidden, placeless island"; "liberated from place"); the Migrant Interior ("a set of usable environmental guides"; "a changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition"); and the mobility statistics (relocation "every five to seven years") as the condition's driver.
• source-notes/potter-2006-kitchen-as-place-to-be

Open Questions

• If the interior "defined a much more permanent sense of place than the architecture or location," is permanence a property of places at all — or of the object-assemblages and timelines that carry identity between them?
• The Lockheed interior was liberated by deception — its exterior designed to be misread from above. Does every liberated interior inherit a decoy logic (an identity performed for its contexts), and what would a liberated interior that is not a decoy look like?
• The tapestry grew valuable "precisely as a result of their itinerant quality" — is mobility here an intrinsic value, or a value derivative of power (dominion displayed by moving wealth between strongholds)?
• "A changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition": which component of the Migrant Interior is the architecture — the changing scaffold or the durable condition — and does the discipline that designs the timeline deserve architecture's name or interior design's?
• At five-to-seven-year relocation cycles, is the liberated interior a design response to a real condition or a luxury good of the mobile class — what does liberation mean for populations who move without choosing to?