Spatial therapies: Interior architecture as a tool for the past, present, and future

Author: Ziad Qureshi Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 4 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge)

Raw file: raw/chapters/qureshi-2018-spatial-therapies.md

Summary

Qureshi argues that interior architecture's defining motivation — the reconciliation of "the existing with the new" — makes it an inherently temporal discipline: a "spatial therapy" that combines "the existing physical past with the new interior installation of the present" to stabilize conditions of disruptive sociotechnological change and enable the future. Positioned explicitly against tabula rasa architecture, the discipline is framed as "a critical path between the hindrance of stagnant nostalgia and the brazen aggression of the naked future." The chapter demonstrates this philosophy through three contemporary crises/opportunities — the post-industrial (deindustrialization, brownfields, Haag's Gas Works Park, Corner's High Line, Vienna's Gasometer City), the post-retail (online shopping, a billion vacant square feet, the "dead mall," Gruen and Koolhaas on retail urbanism, Sears Auto Centers converted to data centers), and the post-analog (the deprioritization of the physical as an "existential crisis for architecture," Brownell's "disruptive application," augmented reality as the virtual continuation of adaptive reuse) — to claim interior architecture as "among the most relevant design tools of today – where history, theory, and design unite."

Key Claims

Interior architecture is inherently temporal: "Through its motivations, interior architecture inherently reconciles the engagement of the existing with the new – a critical amalgamation of the past and present through spatial design to enable the future." See spatial-therapy and interior-architecture.
"Distinct from the notion of the tabula rasa architecture, this discipline establishes how space within existing buildings can serve as a means of addressing and stabilizing our contemporary conditions" — interior architecture defines itself against the tabula rasa.
"Thus, interior architecture is a spatial therapy for critically understanding and connecting the past, present, and future through design actions responding to profound changes."
Disruptive sociotechnological change is not new but "a consistent theme throughout modern history"; "In earlier eras, understanding the relationship between past and present was essential to navigating a path to the future" — a "valuable historical reference" for today. See history.
Attitudes toward the future shape design perspectives: Industrial Revolution-era reactions "ranged from nuanced romanticism, to traumatized post-war expressionism, to unabashed futurism." The nineteenth-century romantics (Pugin's Contrasts, Shelley's Frankenstein) proposed the sublime landscape as counterpoint to mechanized rationalism; Italian futurist Antonio Sant'Elia "violently resisted the limits of the past," celebrating the machine, restlessness, and "the ephemeral conditions of a modernity." See modernism and sublime.
Sant'Elia's architecture, "famously rendered devoid of the preexisting, spatial context, and human occupation," presents "a referential vision of tabula rasa design and its imposed results" — the cautionary case.
Via Daniel Bell ("Teletext and Technology," 1977): structural change is inevitable and relevant to past, present, and future; "lessons may be learned from history that can be applied to the future"; society has consistently adapted through "creativity and surprise."
The contemporary attitude-spectrum repeats the historical one: optimistic futurism (Ray Kurzweil: abundance via cognizant computing, driverless vehicles, cloud analysis), traditionalist conservatism (the global growth of Waldorf Schools on Rudolf Steiner's theories — spirituality, empathy, traditional means, deemphasizing technology), and cautionary voices (Musk, Wozniak, Chomsky, Hawking on the existential danger of unlimited AI and autonomous weapons).
Interior architecture "philosophically and spatially represents a critical path between the hindrance of stagnant nostalgia and the brazen aggression of the naked future" — "aligned with the dichotomy of traditional vs. progressive" (see tradition-vs-innovation).
Its design tactics: "sustainable adaptive reuse, an embrace of the contextually preexistent, intervention by interior spatial installation, and technological innovation through fabrication and material combine the physical past with the newly introduced present."
"As the inevitable inverse of industrialization, deindustrialization provides extensive opportunities for interior architecture and its allied design disciplines to respond to the increasing availability of post-industrial space." The 1960s shift from production to service economy "simultaneously created social and environmental trauma, as well as spatial obsolescence" (see trauma); with over 500,000 brownfield sites in the US alone and greenfield scarcity, "the adaptive reuse of post-industrial spaces is an acute design issue of the contemporary era." See adaptive-reuse and terrain-vague.
Landscape architecture supplies the therapeutic precedent: Richard Haag on Seattle Gas Works Park (1975): "I accepted these gifts, and decided to absolve the community's vindictive feeling toward the gas plant. This vanishing species of the Industrial Revolution was saved from extinction through adaptive reuse."
From James Corner's "urban archaeology" of the High Line (2009) to Vienna's Gasometer City (2001): "The rehabilitation and retention of the existing context, both physical and spiritual, are the hallmarks of design disciplines that balance a variety of interests and temporalities, while undergoing deep-seated and often traumatic social change."
Retail restructuring (online shift, declining consumption, physical-to-digital goods including home 3-D printing) creates "a large supply of underutilized commercial space" and reveals "the emergence of a potential 'post-retail' reality": "An estimated one billion square feet of retail/commercial space is currently vacant in the United States alone, evidenced by environments marked by obsolete malls, big box stores, and strip shopping centers." See post-retail-space.
Victor Gruen "envisioned the essential importance that retail space would achieve in the post-war American (and eventually global) consciousness, with the regional shopping mall described by him as 'the Heart of the City'"; for post-war America "the mall became a social center and cultural icon deeply ensconced in national identity via spatial form." See consumerism.
Building on Gruen, Rem Koolhaas "chose to engage shopping as the essential means to understand urbanity in his Projects for the City series. He proposes that retail spaces remain profoundly important to the city despite the emergence of the 'dead mall' condition." See junkspace.
Post-retail reinvention "can transcend simple adaptive reuse and inspire critical perspectives on social history and heritage"; underused retail sites are already becoming civic, municipal, healthcare, and educational spaces — and the proposed conversion of Sears Auto Centers into internet data centers (Ubiquity Critical Environments) is "the direct expression of the ongoing change from physical retail to digital activity."
"The adaptive agency of interior architecture allows for a more nuanced response that enables economical, sustainable, and historically contiguous environments for potential futures." See sustainability.
The "post-analog" condition: "fundamental changes in consumptive and productive patterns are leading to a deprioritization of the physical – profoundly changing social conventions and representing an existential crisis for architecture." New generations "that identify with internet-based identities demonstrate a growing preference for online personas that are both spatially and perceptively virtual – fundamentally redefining the very idea of 'space' and buildings."
Via Blaine Brownell (building on Marshall McLuhan): "disruptive application" — "conventional solutions are unexpectedly replaced by new ones leading to innovative and advantageous developments." Interior architecture's digitally produced fabrication and "advanced material specificity" make it "ripe for the disruptive application of digital technologies."
Augmented reality (Microsoft HoloLens, Google Glass) extends the discipline's core operation into the virtual: "Unprecedented applications of hybridized digital/analog space, no longer solely defined as adaptive reuse by existing context and new installation in the solely physical sense, reveal an emergent potentiality in augmented reality and interior architecture." AR's vision "to hybridize imposed digital and existent analog space, and even the past/present/future via their dynamic combination, can be enabled with strategies of interior architecture as a bridge between these worlds." See augmented-reality.
"Extending beyond just space, the ideas of interior architecture are an inherently social act that enable meaning and resilience."
Conclusion: "Interior architecture represents a path of balance between stagnant historicism and brazenly radical futures… Interior architecture is a unique and powerful philosophy where history, theory, and design unite to position it among the most relevant design tools in a time of profound and disruptive change."

Connections

Concepts: spatial-therapy · interior-architecture · adaptive-reuse · tabula-rasa · post-retail-space · augmented-reality · terrain-vague · consumerism · digital-architecture · junkspace · sustainability · history · temporality · trauma · modernism · modernity · sublime · urban-sprawl Authors: Ziad Qureshi · Gregory Marinic (ed.) · Rem Koolhaas (engaged via Project on the City Guide to Shopping) Debates: tradition-vs-innovation — the chapter's "critical path between stagnant nostalgia and the brazen aggression of the naked future" as a designed middle position · interior-design-vs-architecture — the case for interior architecture's contemporary relevance ("history, theory, and design unite") · formal-vs-material-utopianism — Sant'Elia's futurism as the formal-utopian cautionary case Related source notes: Hollis — (Re)constructing Histories — the complementary pole of the same Reader: Hollis gives the discipline's historiographic past, Qureshi its prospective philosophy of past/present/future; both cast interior architecture as a practice of combining the existing with the new · Taylor & Preston — Proximities — the sibling volume's theoretical domain · Stalking Detroit — the post-industrial void space Qureshi's therapy claims as opportunity · Wassmer — Big Box Retail Decentralization — the fiscal geography behind the big-box shells of the post-retail landscape · Koolhaas — Logan Airport / Junkspace · Poster — Everyday (Virtual) Life — the everyday's virtualization that Qureshi's "post-analog" section registers

Direct Quotes

Page numbers are not available in the chapter text; quotes are located by section heading. Where the chapter quotes a cited author, the citation note is indicated.

"Profound change is driven by technological and social developments impacting a multitude of conditions and mixed feelings in the present: trepidation about an uncertain future versus nostalgia for the past." (§ opening)

"Through its motivations, interior architecture inherently reconciles the engagement of the existing with the new – a critical amalgamation of the past and present through spatial design to enable the future." (§ opening)

"Distinct from the notion of the tabula rasa architecture, this discipline establishes how space within existing buildings can serve as a means of addressing and stabilizing our contemporary conditions." (§ opening)

"Thus, interior architecture is a spatial therapy for critically understanding and connecting the past, present, and future through design actions responding to profound changes." (§ opening)

"Designers' reactions ranged from nuanced romanticism, to traumatized post-war expressionism, to unabashed futurism." (§ "Future beginnings")

"Italian futurists such as architect Antonio Sant'Elia violently resisted the limits of the past. Sant'Elia celebrated the potential of the machine alongside revolutionary change, restlessness, and the ephemeral conditions of a modernity." (§ "Future beginnings")

"Bell claims that human society has consistently adapted through 'creativity and surprise' in face of great challenges." (§ "Future beginnings," on Daniel Bell 1977)

"Famously rendered devoid of the preexisting, spatial context, and human occupation, the architecture of Sant'Elia presents a referential vision of tabula rasa design and its imposed results." (§ "Future beginnings")

"Responsive to this broader historical and theoretical context, the discipline of interior architecture philosophically and spatially represents a critical path between the hindrance of stagnant nostalgia and the brazen aggression of the naked future." (§ "Future beginnings")

"The design tactics of sustainable adaptive reuse, an embrace of the contextually preexistent, intervention by interior spatial installation, and technological innovation through fabrication and material combine the physical past with the newly introduced present." (§ "Future beginnings")

"As the inevitable inverse of industrialization, deindustrialization provides extensive opportunities for interior architecture and its allied design disciplines to respond to the increasing availability of post-industrial space." (§ "Productive shifts and infrastructural opportunism")

"Beginning in the 1960s, the fundamental shift in Western societies from a production to a service-based economy simultaneously created social and environmental trauma, as well as spatial obsolescence." (§ "Productive shifts and infrastructural opportunism")

"I accepted these gifts, and decided to absolve the community's vindictive feeling toward the gas plant. This vanishing species of the Industrial Revolution was saved from extinction through adaptive reuse." (Richard Haag, 1982, on Gas Works Park, quoted § "Productive shifts and infrastructural opportunism," via Reed 2008, p. 25)

"The rehabilitation and retention of the existing context, both physical and spiritual, are the hallmarks of design disciplines that balance a variety of interests and temporalities, while undergoing deep-seated and often traumatic social change." (§ "Productive shifts and infrastructural opportunism")

"An estimated one billion square feet of retail/commercial space is currently vacant in the United States alone, evidenced by environments marked by obsolete malls, big box stores, and strip shopping centers." (§ "Consumptive crossroads")

"These activities reveal the emergence of a potential 'post-retail' reality." (§ "Consumptive crossroads")

"Architect and social theorist Victor Gruen envisioned the essential importance that retail space would achieve in the post-war American (and eventually global) consciousness, with the regional shopping mall described by him as 'the Heart of the City.'" (§ "Consumptive crossroads," on Gruen 1965)

"Invoking Gruen's original ideas, Rem Koolhaas chose to engage shopping as the essential means to understand urbanity in his Projects for the City series. He proposes that retail spaces remain profoundly important to the city despite the emergence of the 'dead mall' condition." (§ "Consumptive crossroads," on Koolhaas 2002)

"The reinvention of post-retail space is a vibrant contemporary issue that remains grounded in the shared history of the past, considering new needs with retrospective meaning." (§ "Consumptive crossroads")

"fundamental changes in consumptive and productive patterns are leading to a deprioritization of the physical – profoundly changing social conventions and representing an existential crisis for architecture." (§ "Digital directions")

"New generations that identify with internet-based identities demonstrate a growing preference for online personas that are both spatially and perceptively virtual – fundamentally redefining the very idea of 'space' and buildings." (§ "Digital directions")

"conventional solutions are unexpectedly replaced by new ones leading to innovative and advantageous developments." (§ "Digital directions," on Blaine Brownell's "disruptive application," via Brownell 2012, p. 9)

"Unprecedented applications of hybridized digital/analog space, no longer solely defined as adaptive reuse by existing context and new installation in the solely physical sense, reveal an emergent potentiality in augmented reality and interior architecture that is neither alien nor outside the normative practices of the discipline." (§ "Digital directions")

"As technologies and the discipline move toward the future, augmented reality represents a realm of possibility and potential offering solutions to ongoing change." (§ "Digital directions")

"Extending beyond just space, the ideas of interior architecture are an inherently social act that enable meaning and resilience." (§ "Interior architecture as therapy")

"Interior architecture represents a path of balance between stagnant historicism and brazenly radical futures." (§ "Interior architecture as therapy")

"It demonstrates how interior architecture is among the most relevant design tools of today – where history, theory, and design unite to address the most imperative issues in an era of disruptive change." (§ opening)

Open Questions

Can a design discipline function as "therapy" for social trauma (Haag's "absolving the community's vindictive feeling"), or does the therapeutic metaphor overstate architecture's capacity and risk paternalism? How does it compare with wiki accounts of trauma that stress the unprocessed residue design cannot integrate?
Does augmented reality's "hybridized digital/analog space" preserve the past-protective care Hollis (via Ricoeur) demands of alteration — or does a digital overlay applied to existing space introduce a new, perceptual tabula rasa?
Is the "post-retail" crisis an opportunity for interior architecture, or evidence that consumption has vacated physical space faster than design can re-inhabit it — and who funds the reinvention of a billion vacant square feet?
Qureshi celebrates "disruptive application" while warning against Sant'Elia's "tabula rasa design and its imposed results" — where exactly is the line between productive disruption and the imposed results the chapter condemns?
Is Qureshi's "critical amalgamation of the past, present, and future" the same operation as Hollis's "reinterpretation of fragmentary pasts to give them utility in the present" — or does the prospective, future-facing frame (therapy, stabilization, navigation) constitute a distinct, fifth conception of the discipline?