Territory and inhabitation

Author: Amy Campos Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 10 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge)

Raw file: raw/chapters/campos-2018-territory-and-inhabitation.md

Summary

Practitioner-theorist Amy Campos (founder-principal of ACA, Amy Campos Architect, San Francisco; Professor of Interior Design at California College of the Arts) states interior architecture's eleventh disciplinary self-conception: the territorial conception. The chapter "proposes a development from the nineteenth-century territorial idea of a politically and geographically located landscape to a more nuanced understanding of territory as a defined, but placeless, field of action. Territory evolves from a fixed place to a nomadic system of occupation," and describes "a reciprocal, rather than hierarchical, relationship between territory and the inhabited interior." Four historical cases calibrate the shift: the American frontier (territory as located, hierarchically dominant place under Manifest Destiny); Çatalhöyük (the constructed interior that produces a public territory — the roof as thoroughfare, public square, and entry); the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant's WWII camouflage (interiority "independent of territory as a located condition" under a decoy suburban scrim); and the traveling tapestry (territory marked by a portable object). Three contemporary projects — Titlecase, the Migrant Interior, and the Tailored salon — carry the argument into the present: "Territory as occupied space, and interior as defined inhabitation, have evolved into a singular field of designed action, equally and reciprocally defining each other." Portions of the chapter were previously published in the International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design 1, "Autonomous Identities" issue (2013).

Key Claims

The chapter's thesis: "Territory as occupied space, and interior as defined inhabitation, have evolved into a singular field of designed action, equally and reciprocally defining each other" — the relation is "reciprocal, rather than hierarchical." See territory, interior-architecture.
Territory itself evolves: "a development from the nineteenth-century territorial idea of a politically and geographically located landscape to a more nuanced understanding of territory as a defined, but placeless, field of action. Territory evolves from a fixed place to a nomadic system of occupation." See territory, deterritorialisation.
The frontier case: from the nineteenth-century American frontier, "territory connotes the promise of ownership of land and resources and simultaneously suggests an affirmation of self," claimed under "Manifest Destiny, a belief that American citizens had a fundamental right to own land and a duty to steward it." See territory, tabula-rasa.
The claimed landscape was "a resource-rich, culturally blank slate upon which owners could pursue new ideals, beyond the persecution of feudal hierarchies and 'Old World' values"; in "the Jeffersonian sense, the enculturation of place was dictated by the will and self-realization of the free individual who staked claim to that territory." See tabula-rasa.
Frontier hierarchy: "Territory, as a located place, became the hierarchically dominant component of a complex spatial and cultural system. In this case, the land itself provides the structure for inhabitation and the cultural context that might emerge from it." See partition-of-space, power-and-space.
Çatalhöyük (occupied 7400–6200 BC, Southern Anatolia) inverts the frontier's hierarchy: "The construction of habitations produced a fabricated territory upon which a public culture was defined." A single agglomerated mud-brick megastructure with no streets or squares — "the roof of this megastructure was the thoroughfare, the public square, and the entry point for interior dwellings"; up to eighteen layers of rebuilding formed the city mound's stepped topography. See territory, inside-outside-dialectic.
The roofline as boundary: "The roofline acts as the territorial marker between interior and exterior – private and public – space. The spatial hierarchy of the American frontier is reversed in Çatalhöyük's monolithic city. Here, the constructed interior produces a public space that defines the territory of the city." See boundaries, inside-outside-dialectic.
The Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant (WWII, Colonel John F. Ohmer, Hollywood set and prop designers): an enormous scrim roof disguised the entire plant as the surrounding suburbs — "Paper thin fake houses, streets with rubber cars, trees, and shrubs, even laundry lines complete with drying clothes and fire hydrants made up the elevated horizontal decoy" — "a new horizontal facade built as a peripheral diversion," "the antithesis to the adage 'form follows function.'" See liberated-interior, non-places.
The camouflage thesis: "Interiority exists independent of territory as a located condition. The plant is a hidden, placeless island within an intentionally inconsequential landscape. The landscape of this false suburb, the camouflage scrim, allows the interior to be liberated from place, suggesting a potential for it to exist in any location or no location." See interiority, liberated-interior.
The tapestry case: as northern Europe moved from wooden fortresses to stone strongholds, tapestries became "equally valuable tools for indicating dominion and power as rulers traveled from one location to another" — serving both as "applied insulation" and as depictions "of the power and wealth of those who owned them"; "Wherever their owners took them, tapestries marked territory." See territory, power-and-space.
Mobility as value: "It was the mobility of the tapestries that rendered them strategically more valuable, precisely as a result of their itinerant quality." The Redemption of Man Series (early sixteenth century, ten 26-foot-wide panels) implies owners "of such vast wealth and property as to accommodate such a large series in multiple locations." By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tapestries "became a virtual window to another highly embellished narrative territory regardless of the actual environment," passing between generations and "reinforcing family mythologies through their narrative depictions." See narrative-space, liberated-interior.
The contemporary condition: "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." See liberated-interior, territorial-transience.
Titlecase (typography studio, San Francisco): "permanent modular components (shelving, desks, benches, and cabinets) proportionately designed in dimension and detail for easy reconfiguration within their current location and transferrable to any new space"; a "permanently nomadic plan for a single space that can be transferred and expanded into a new space"; against "relatively disposable, temporary interior products meant to be consumed for a single space and discarded." See flexible-interior, territorial-transience.
The scale inversion: "Territory is staked out at the scale of furniture rather than at the scale of landscape" — desk design accommodates "the specific location of pen holders, accommodations for right- or left-handedness, preference for notebook or trace roll racks, and foot rests." See territory, partition-of-space.
Client co-authorship: "The clients participate in the making of the space every day and use the framework of the design as a platform for their own experimentations in occupation"; semi-permanent installations (a Fred Sandback homage string installation ten feet above the floor, a painted datum, a vacuum-formed translucent backlit ceiling made with the clients' vocational tools) give "a consistent identity to varying events and configurations." See authorship.
The Migrant Interior (residential project, San Jose): clients "knew that the place they inhabited would likely change before the things they put in that space would"; the interior was designed as "a set of usable environmental guides to be deployed within this space and built upon within any other space" — "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." See liberated-interior, dwelling.
Durability relocated: "Fixed location is seen here as a changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition" — including a commissioned floating field of almost 100 hand-blown glass spheres on seven colors of monofilament, "a long-lasting investment in their notion of home because of its mobility," designed to adjust volumetrically to new spaces. See dwelling, liberated-interior.
Territorial transience: "In the twenty-first century, occupying a situated place becomes less significant than the ability to sustain multiple and simultaneous conditions in one space or location. The design of the interior and its objects can be defined as processes of occupation rather than as artifacts of a specific location." See territorial-transience, interior-architecture.
The Tailored salon and art gallery (downtown San Francisco, 1,200 sq ft): "a modular system of components… that could move, aggregate, stack, and disperse to produce multiple, varied, and at times simultaneous inhabitations of the space" — the "toggle stool," styling stands with concealed lighting and picture-rail hooks plugged into a ceiling power grid — "At Tailored, the employment of modular objects enables the structuring of movements, cycles, and simultaneous occupations in space, regardless of location." See territorial-transience, static-vs-dynamic-architecture.
The closing taxonomy: "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. Transient interiors, exemplified by the tapestry, Titlecase, and Tailored Salon, introduces mobility and simultaneity as an evolution of territory in a twenty-first century, resource-scarce, nomadic context." See liberated-interior, territorial-transience.

Connections

Concepts: territory · liberated-interior · territorial-transience · interior-architecture · interiority · inside-outside-dialectic · boundaries · partition-of-space · flexible-interior · deterritorialisation · non-places · tabula-rasa · dwelling · narrative-space · authorship Authors: Amy Campos · Gregory Marinic (ed.) · Marc Manack (the sibling technological conception: Manack's "vacuum forming to its architectural limits" is echoed by Titlecase's "vacuum-formed, translucent, backlit ceiling feature"; both chapters derive disciplinary identity from technology-enabled interiors) · Michael Webb (the interior liberated from location: Webb's Drive-in House rotates around the occupant, Campos's interior moves with it) · Shirley Ardener (counterpoint: Ardener's bounded territories with gate-kept rules vs Campos's placeless field of occupation) Debates: interior-design-vs-architecture — Position N: the reciprocal territory (the interior no longer the subordinated term) · power-and-space — Position I: territory as power's field (claim-staking, dominion display, decoy) · static-vs-dynamic-architecture — the transient interior as occupant-operated dynamism in present practice Related source notes: Manack — Fabricating interiority — the two most recent conceptions in sequence: Manack fabricates distinctions from architecture within it; Campos dissolves the location itself, the interior surviving as a transferrable kit · Taylor — Shape shifting — Taylor's dynamic interior responds through sensors in one location; Campos's transient interior is moved by occupants across locations ("regardless of location") — technological vs logistical dynamism · Webb — Inside out — the portable, vehicular interior as precedent for the liberated interior · Ardener — The Partition of Space — the anthropological account of bounded, rule-governed territory against which Campos's placeless occupation reads as an inversion · Stokes-Rees — Symbiotic spaces — the Reader's earlier "Territories" section chapter: the museum fixes national identity in place, Campos's interiors carry identity between places · Borden — Thick Edge — mobility and the city's in-between zones vs Campos's mobility of the interior itself.

Direct Quotes

Page numbers are not available in the chapter text; quotes are located by paragraph content.

"This chapter proposes a development from the nineteenth-century territorial idea of a politically and geographically located landscape to a more nuanced understanding of territory as a defined, but placeless, field of action. Territory evolves from a fixed place to a nomadic system of occupation." (opening abstract)

"Using historical examples that suggest varied definitions of territory, as well as contemporary interiors that engage modern conditions of placelessness, nomadism, and transience, this chapter describes a reciprocal, rather than hierarchical, relationship between territory and the inhabited interior." (opening abstract)

"From the vantage point of the nineteenth-century American frontier, territory connotes the promise of ownership of land and resources and simultaneously suggests an affirmation of self." (The frontier)

"settlers were allowed to stake claim to land under the notion of Manifest Destiny, a belief that American citizens had a fundamental right to own land and a duty to steward it." (The frontier)

"claimed landscape was seen as a resource-rich, culturally blank slate upon which owners could pursue new ideals, beyond the persecution of feudal hierarchies and 'Old World' values." (The frontier)

"In the Jeffersonian sense, the enculturation of place was dictated by the will and self-realization of the free individual who staked claim to that territory." (The frontier)

"Territory, as a located place, became the hierarchically dominant component of a complex spatial and cultural system. In this case, the land itself provides the structure for inhabitation and the cultural context that might emerge from it." (The frontier)

"The construction of habitations produced a fabricated territory upon which a public culture was defined." (Constructed territories, on Çatalhöyük)

"In Çatalhöyük, there were no streets or squares separating independent buildings, only an aggregate of dwellings entered through rooftop hatches. The city was built as a single, agglomerated structure. In fact, the roof of this megastructure was the thoroughfare, the public square, and the entry point for interior dwellings." (Constructed territories)

"Over many generations, houses were rebuilt on previous layers of demolition. Sometimes, as many as eighteen layers built the city mound's topography, making the roof structure stepped to provide shady places to gather outside and a vertical surface for small windows providing light to the interiors." (Constructed territories)

"The roofline acts as the territorial marker between interior and exterior – private and public – space. The spatial hierarchy of the American frontier is reversed in Çatalhöyük's monolithic city. Here, the constructed interior produces a public space that defines the territory of the city." (Constructed territories)

"the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant exemplifies a complete disconnection of the interior activities from the exterior environment in which it resides." (Constructed territories)

"teams of set and prop designers, decorators, stage managers, and other experts from Hollywood's production stages were recruited to take on the massive project of hiding a military operation the size of an entire neighborhood." (Constructed territories)

"Paper thin fake houses, streets with rubber cars, trees, and shrubs, even laundry lines complete with drying clothes and fire hydrants made up the elevated horizontal decoy. This exterior space, seen only from above, produced a new horizontal facade built as a peripheral diversion for a series of precise and enclosed actions." (Constructed territories)

"The decoration of the exterior, as a decoy landscape, acts an architectural distraction from the covert operations of the plant inside, becoming the antithesis to the adage 'form follows function.'" (Constructed territories)

"Interiority exists independent of territory as a located condition. The plant is a hidden, placeless island within an intentionally inconsequential landscape. The landscape of this false suburb, the camouflage scrim, allows the interior to be liberated from place, suggesting a potential for it to exist in any location or no location." (Constructed territories)

"As territories became defined by more permanent architectural outposts, the tapestries developed as equally valuable tools for indicating dominion and power as rulers traveled from one location to another." (The liberated interior)

"Wherever their owners took them, tapestries marked territory." (The liberated interior)

"The tapestries became a virtual window to another highly embellished narrative territory regardless of the actual environment within which it resided. They typically passed between multiple generations, reinforcing family mythologies through their narrative depictions." (The liberated interior)

"It was the mobility of the tapestries that rendered them strategically more valuable, precisely as a result of their itinerant quality." (The liberated interior)

"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)

"Faced with this situation, the choice is often relatively disposable, temporary interior products meant to be consumed for a single space and discarded when locations change. With increasing resource scarcity and population mobility, however, this is a progressively untenable approach to the way we live today." (The liberated interior, on Titlecase)

"Designed for a permanent state of flux in program, this project produces a permanently nomadic plan for a single space that can be transferred and expanded into a new space; spatial informality and flexibility are necessities." (The liberated interior, on Titlecase)

"Territory is staked out at the scale of furniture rather than at the scale of landscape." (The liberated interior, on Titlecase)

"The lack of commitment to the space itself, but acknowledgement of the need for specificity in environmental identity and function, afforded a free experimentation as a series of ongoing physical and programmatic installations. This interior provides new ground for the exploration of mobility and impermanence in the context of any spatial environment." (The liberated interior, on Titlecase)

"The interior as a set of inhabitable elements, from their point of view, defined a much more permanent sense of place than the architecture or location – very much like the example of the tapestry." (The liberated interior, on the Migrant Interior)

"What was ultimately provided for this client was a plan of action, a designed timeline for use and change from location to location." (The liberated interior, on the Migrant Interior)

"The opportunity to embrace transience as a design strategy is inherent to the impermanent character of the interior, being more fixed to this family's evolving scale, location, and eventual dispersion than the architecture or place. Fixed location is seen here as a changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition." (The liberated interior, on the Migrant Interior)

"In the twenty-first century, occupying a situated place becomes less significant than the ability to sustain multiple and simultaneous conditions in one space or location. The design of the interior and its objects can be defined as processes of occupation rather than as artifacts of a specific location." (Territorial transience)

"A modular system of components was designed for the project that could move, aggregate, stack, and disperse to produce multiple, varied, and at times simultaneous inhabitations of the space." (Territorial transience, on Tailored)

"At Tailored, the employment of modular objects enables the structuring of movements, cycles, and simultaneous occupations in space, regardless of location." (Territorial transience)

"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. Transient interiors, exemplified by the tapestry, Titlecase, and Tailored Salon, introduces mobility and simultaneity as an evolution of territory in a twenty-first century, resource-scarce, nomadic context." (closing)

"Territory as occupied space, and interior as defined inhabitation, have evolved into a singular field of designed action, equally and reciprocally defining each other." (closing)

Open Questions

If territory and interior "equally and reciprocally defin[e] each other," what happens to the political asymmetries Ardener's partition names — can a reciprocal territory still gate-keep, rank, and mute, or does reciprocity dissolve the gate?
Is the Lockheed case an emancipation or its parody: an interior "liberated from place" by military deception — does the liberated interior inherit the decoy's ethics (identity without location, designed to be misread)?
The chapter marks territory at three scales — landscape (frontier), roofline (Çatalhöyük), furniture (Titlecase). Is scale the variable that determines which term (territory or interior) is "hierarchically dominant," or does reciprocity hold at every scale?
"Fixed location is seen here as a changing scaffold for a durable but nomadic interior condition" — what, then, is the discipline's object: the scaffold (architecture), the condition (inhabitation), or the field (territory)?
The chapter concludes with "processes of occupation rather than … artifacts of a specific location" — does the process conception absorb the Reader's earlier conceptions (artefact, alteration, fabrication) as so many phases of occupation, or does it describe only the mobile minority of interiors?
Does a "designed timeline for use and change from location to location" (the Migrant Interior's deliverable) make time — not space — the interior architect's proper medium?

Notes

The chapter is Chapter 10 of The Interior Architecture Reader (ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge, 2018), following Hollis (1), Deyong (2), La Coe (3), Qureshi (4), Webb (5), Stokes-Rees (6), Taylor (7), Teston (8), and Manack (9); like Manack's and Webb's chapters it is a practitioner-authored theory chapter, illustrated with the author's own projects (ACA Amy Campos Architect: Titlecase, the Migrant Interior, Tailored Salon, 2013).
Notes cited in the chapter: John O'Sullivan, "Annexation," The United States Democratic Review (July–August 1845) — the source of "Manifest Destiny"; Thomas Jefferson, "Louisiana Purchase Treaty" (30 April 1803); UNESCO World Heritage Centre, "Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük" (2015); Lockheed Martin, "Lockheed During World War II: Operation Camouflage" (2015); Louis H. Sullivan, "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896 (the "form follows function" adage); Anna G. Bennett, Five Centuries of Tapestries (1976).
Portions previously published in the International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design 1, "Autonomous Identities" issue (2013).