Multiple Interiorities

Definition

Multiple interiorities name the spatial product of the campfire-gradient model: interiority produced not by a single enclosing shell but by environmental gradients, producing "multiple interiors, multiple degrees and zones of activation that range in scale, scope, and perception as multi-layered, nested interiorities" (Gattegno & Johnson). The concept has three components. First, gradients: the campfire's "gradient of multiple environmental qualities with different degrees of interiority" — zones around an interference-with-meteorology that "could be utilized in multiple ways, allowing for the subtle creation of multiple interiors implied by simple environmental and, by extension, experiential variation." Second, zones of occupation: Lightswarm "creates variable degrees and zones of occupation, from the intimate scale of clapping your hands or tapping a window to gain response to larger programmatic responses, such as sounds in the museum or the park, or city-scale activation as a bus drives past or a plane flies by." Third, scalar application: the installations "create multiple and overlapping interiorities that may be applied at a various scales" — the chapter's closing generalization, with "rooms, buildings, and cities" as the range. The installations also "seek to produce gradients of enclosure and ranges of intimacy and interiority," and their four levels of engagement (sonic/textual, ambient, atmospheric, urban) are the concept's perceptual strata.

The concept joins the wiki's existing pluralizations of interiority from the other direction. The McClures' prospect of the aspect holds "multiple interiorities across scales" as an architectural achievement — a building simultaneously interior and exterior, interiors overlapping recursively. Gattegno and Johnson's is data-environmental: interiorities produced by sensing, actuation, and information intensity, "multi-layered, nested" rather than held simultaneously by one building. Both refuse the single-room model of interiority (interiority); both make interiority scalar. But where the McClures' unit is the building that persists, Gattegno and Johnson's is the installation that responds — and where the McClures' interiorities are perceptual-tenurial, these are environmental-infrastructural, plugged into the grid. See heterogeneous-space (the differential spatial order the gradients realize), sentient-spaces (the intelligent gradient), the-campfire (the prototype).

Key Thinkers

• Nataly Gattegno & Jason Kelly Johnson — the concept's source: gradient interiority as the design programme of the urban installations, and "multiple and overlapping interiorities… at a various scales" as the trajectory's product.
• Reyner Banham — the proto-source: the campfire's gradient "of multiple environmental qualities with different degrees of interiority" — interiority by environmental variation, ante data.
• Ursula Emery McClure & Michael A. McClure — the architectural parallel: "the value of spaces that possess the prospect of the aspect – multiple interiorities across scales" — the recursive, perceptual version of the same pluralization.
• Superstudio — the generalizer: the world as "a variable, nomadic, and ephemeral sequence of events and spaces" — interiority everywhere and nowhere once the grid replaces the wall (collective, not paged).
• Clay Odom — the serial-production parallel: POPs "tend to generate interiorities that are not discrete, temporally frozen responses, but multivalent systems, ongoing spatial effects, and atmospheric productions" — interiorities pluralized across a serial practice rather than across one building's gradients ("one in a series of iterative projects completed across of range of sites and times using similar methods and materials," on Saraceno) (2018).

Related Concepts

• Interiority — the parent concept: multiple interiorities are interiority pluralized — no longer the one room's sheltered innerness (Taylor & Preston) but layered, nested, zone-distributed innerness.
• The Prospect of the Aspect — the architectural parallel: "multiple interiorities across scales" held simultaneously by one building — recursion vs. nesting, tenure vs. response.
• The Campfire — the prototype: the gradient-producing interference that first made "multiple interiors" without walls.
• Sentient Spaces — the producing condition: "gradients of environment begin gaining intelligence through their seamless integration with data" — the sentient gradient as interiority-machine.
• Heterogeneous Space — the spatial-order frame: "a multiplicity of atmospheres" ordered by differential relationships — the gradient interiorities as that order's experiential face.
• Enclosure — the concept's displaces-object: "gradients of enclosure" replace the binary inside/outside with degrees — enclosure graded rather than given.
• Event Space — the temporal mode: the zones of activation are event-spaces at multiple scales, from hand-clap to city.
• Atmosphere — the perceptual medium: the installations' "atmospheric range of mood, color, light, and effect" — interiority delivered as produced atmosphere.
• Boundaries — the instrument: the sensing facade as a boundary that generates interiority on both its sides (Lightswarm "negotiates the two grounds").
• Microevent/Microenvironment — the Superstudio form: the world as gradient-sequence — interiority by plug-in rather than by wall.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• From ambient environments to sentient spaces (Gattegno & Johnson 2018) — the concept's source: "multiple interiors, multiple degrees and zones of activation that range in scale, scope, and perception as multi-layered, nested interiorities"; "gradients of enclosure and ranges of intimacy and interiority"; the campfire's gradient; Lightswarm's scale-range (hand-clap → museum/park → city); the four engagement levels; "multiple and overlapping interiorities that may be applied at a various scales."
• Inside Looking In: The Prospect of the Aspect (McClure & McClure 2018) — the architectural parallel and contrast: "multiple interiorities across scales" as the prospect of the aspect's value — interiors held simultaneously by persistent buildings rather than produced by responsive gradients.
• The Dialectics of Outside and Inside (Bachelard 1958/2006) — the phenomenological baseline the concept displaces: interiority as the dialectic's sheltered, valued innerness — against which gradient interiority asks whether "inside" can survive being made a matter of degree.
• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the serial-production parallel: interiorities pluralized across a serial practice — POPs generate "interiorities that are not discrete, temporally frozen responses, but multivalent systems, ongoing spatial effects, and atmospheric productions"; Saraceno's On Space Time Foam is "one in a series of iterative projects completed across of range of sites and times using similar methods and materials," where "moments away from contextual connection are conditions where surface and spatial effects are maximized." Where G&J's pluralities are zones within one installation's gradient, Odom's are the products of many installations over time — the same pluralization achieved by serial production rather than spatial gradation. See productions, production-oriented-practices.
• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's evental register: "Within the singular spatial event of architecture, multiple events are enacted through spacing" — multiple interiorities produced not by gradients (G&J), persistent buildings (McClures), or serial practice (Odom) but by the evental itself: "Space, saturated with spaces, becomes a continual unfolding, temporally defined and multiplied by an accelerated succession of actions"; the interior as "space-in-action" within the objectile's "dilating layers"; and the historic/aesthetic/quotidian events that are "neither singular nor isolated, but manifold, fragmented, overlapping, and mobile, implicating all as participants." Where the gradient register multiplies interiority across space, the evental multiplies it across time — see event-space, objectile, spacing.

Open Questions

• Can interiority be graded at all — or is interiority constitutively binary (Grosz's enframing; the dialectic's inside/outside), so that "multiple interiorities" is interiority plus mere environmental comfort zones wearing its name?
• The McClures' multiple interiorities are held by persistent buildings; Gattegno and Johnson's are produced by responsive installations. Is the concept therefore split between tenure (what lasts) and response (what reacts) — and which version can house the "alternate… receptacles for interiority" Taylor's dynamic-interior chapter demands?
• If interiorities are "nested," what is the nest's structure — concentric (Russian-doll), layered (geological), or networked (grid)? The chapter's installations suggest networked (four simultaneous engagement levels), but the campfire image suggests concentric.
• Lightswarm's most intimate zone is triggered "by clapping your hands or tapping a window" — is the occupant then the producer of their own interiority, and does that make the concept the user-driven end of the interiority spectrum or its most administered one (the response is programmed)?
• Superstudio's generalization ("no inside or outside could exist") and the concept's proliferation ("multiple interiorities") point opposite ways from the same grid: does plugging into the energy-information landscape multiply interiors or abolish interiority as a category?