Interior Provocations

Interior Provocations repositions the interior as a convergence of phenomena flowing from technology, human and nonhuman behaviors, and corporality. Its contributors sustain the realm of the interior as a critical space of theory and practice while recognizing its elasticity – with the salubrious effect of freeing the interior from its architectural container.

Susan Yelavich, Professor Emerita, Design Studies, Parsons School of Design, The New School; author, Thinking Design through Literature (Routledge, 2019)

Interior Provocations extends the academic analysis of interiors through eleven theoretically challenging case studies. The authors interrogate the relation of architecture and interiors in a variety of contexts including urbanism and outdoor rooms, landscapes and virtual reality. Collectively, they demonstrate the autonomy not only of interior design and interiors, but also of interior design discourse.

Grace Lees-Maffei, Professor of Design History, University of Hertfordshire, UK.

This volume provides an absorbing insight into the editors and authors expansive insights into unbounded interiorities. It compels the reader to interrogate their own assumptions regarding disciplinary distinctions, and instead requires them to recalibrate their position through their immersion in the exploration of the limitless ambiguities of what interiors can or might be.

Graeme Brooker, Professor of Interior Design at the Royal College of Art

Timely and ambitious, Interior Provocations challenges us to reconsider how interiors are generated, experienced, and enacted. No longer bound by architectural walls, the interiors examined in this impressive collection range from the technologically-mediated, virtual and immersive to the socially-imagined, ephemeral and subversive.

D.J. Huppatz, Associate Professor of Architecture and Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Mapping cultural sensibilities across media, material, technology and ritual, this collection argues persuasively for the interior as an autonomous entity worthy of sustained scholarly attention.

Charles Rice, University of Technology Sydney

This text presents a provocative examination of autonomy. The essays exploit this term to distinguish disciplinary, theoretical and practical distinctions between architecture and interior, across a broad range of contexts. Exploring interiors in this manner, offers a significant way to address the interior and its cultural effects.

Mark Taylor, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

This fascinating book is an indispensable addition to recent scholarship on interior design history and theory. Exploring the roles of nature, technology and non-human agents in the creation of the interior, these thought-provoking essays move beyond the traditional focus on human inhabitation and invite readers to consider interiority as a post-human condition.

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Victoria University of Wellington