Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader

Walter Benjamin observed in his writings on the interior that ‘to live means to leave traces.’ This interior design theory reader focuses on just how such traces might manifest themselves. In order to explore interior design’s links to other disciplines, the selected texts reflect a wide range of interests extending beyond the traditional confines of design and architecture. It is conceived as a matrix, which intersects social, political, psychological, philosophical, technological and gender discourse, with practice issues, such as materials, lighting, colour, furnishing, and the body. The anthology presents a complex and sometimes conflicting terrain, while also creating a distinct body of knowledge particular to the interior. Locating theory on the interior through these multifarious sources, it encourages future discourse in an area often marginalised but now emerging in its own right. Within the reader individual excerpts are referenced to their place in the matrix and sequenced alphabetically. This organising strategy resists both a chronological and themed structure in order to provoke associations and inferences between excerpts. In this way the book offers the possibility of examining the interior from multiple vantage points: a disciplinary focus, the spatial and physical attributes of interiors, historical sequence, and topical issue based. Excerpts from Thomas Hope, Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton and Charles Eastlake provide contemporary nineteenth century accounts as the profession emerges, whereas Barbara Penner, Penny Sparke, Charles Rice, Georges Teyssot and Rebecca Houze offer re–interpretations of this period. The complexities of the twentieth–century interior are revealed by Robyn Longhurst, Kevin Melchionne, George Wagner, John Macgregor Wise, Joel Sanders and many others.

Acknowledgements. Proximities. Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston. The Partition of Space. Shirley Ardener. The Dialectics of Outside and Inside. Gaston Bachelard. The Sterility of Perfection + The Rule Breaker’s Success. Billy Baldwin. Chromophobia. David Batchelor. Structures of Atmosphere. Jean Baudrillard. A Christian House. Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thick Edge: Architectural Boundaries and Spatial Flows. Iain Borden. A Wall of Books: The Gender of Natural Colors in Modern Architecture. William W. Braham. A House for Josephine Baker. Karen Burns. Bodies and Mirrors. Ann C. Colley. Movement and Myth: the Schröder House and Transformable Living. Catherine Croft. Spatial Stories. Michel de Certeau. Suitability, Simplicity and Proportion. Elsie de Wolfe. On the Means by which Repose is Attainable in Decoration. Christopher Dresser. Volatile Architectures. Jim Drobnick. Thing–Shapes. Winka Dubbeldam. The Dining Room. Charles L. Eastlake. Men’s Room. Lee Edelman. ‘Decorators May be Compared to Doctors’. Emma Ferry. Berggasse 19: Inside Freud’s Office. Diana Fuss and Joel Sanders. Toward a Feminist Poetics: Infection in the Sentence. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Woman’s Domestic Body. Beverly Gordon. Notes on Digital Nesting: a Poetics of Evolutionary Form. Mark Goulthorpe. Faith and Virtuality: A Brief History of Virtual Reality. Christian Groothuizen. Thinking of Gadamer’s Floor. Jacques Herzog. Buildings and their Genotypes. Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson. Household Furniture and Interior Decoration. Thomas Hope. From Wiener Kunst im Hause to the Wiener Werkstätte. Rebecca Houze. Wherever I Lay My Girlfriend, That’s My Home. Lynda Johnston and Gill Valentine. Interiors: Nineteenth–Century Essays on the ‘Masculine’ and the ‘Feminine’ Room. Juliet Kinchin. Tables, Chairs, and Other Machines for Thinking. Mark Kingwell. On the Loss of (Dark) Inside Space. Constanze Kreiser. Social, Spatial and Temporal Factors. Roderick J. Lawrence. Wiener Wohnkultur: Interior Design in Vienna, 1910–1930. Christopher Long. (Re)presenting Shopping Centres and Bodies: Questions of Pregnancy. Robyn Longhurst. The Tyranny of Taste. Jules Lubbock. Streamlining: The Aesthetics of Waste. Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller. The Architecture of Manners: Henry James, Edith Wharton and The Mount. Sarah Luria. ‘House Beautiful’: Style and Consumption in the Home. Ruth Madigan and Moira Munro. Living in Glass Houses. Kevin Melchionne. Dust. Celeste Olalquiaga. Colour and Method. Amédée Ozenfant. Ordering the World: Perceptions of Architecture, Space and Time. Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards. A World of Unmentionable Suffering. Barbara Penner. The Apartment. Georges Perec. A Kitchen as a Place to Be. Norman Potter. Making Charleston (1916–17). Christopher Reed. The Clubs of St. James’s: Places of Public Patriarchy. Jane Rendell. Rethinking Histories of the Interior. Charles Rice. Designing the Dinner Party. Rachel Rich. ‘Hi Honey, I’m Home’.   Joyce Henri Robinson. Curtain Wars. Joel Sanders. Productions of Incarceration: The Architecture of Daniel Paul Schreber. Felicity D. Scott. Ornament and Order. Jacques Soulillou. ‘The Things that Surround One’. Penny Sparke. Decorating Culture. Xiaobing Tang. In Praise of Shadows. Jun′ichirō Tanizaki. Architecture and Interior: A Roam of One’s Own. Mark Taylor. Boredom and Bedroom: The Suppression of the Habitual. Georges Teyssot. Visitors. Henry David Thoreau. The Chic Interior and the Feminine Modern. Lisa Tiersten. Inside Fear: Secret Places and Hidden Spaces in Dwellings. Anne Troutman. The Pleasure of Architecture. Bernard Tschumi. Domestic Doyennes: Purveyors of Atmospheres Spoken and Visual. John C. Turpin. The Lair of the Bachelor. George Wagner. Ultrasuede. George Wagner. The Historical Tradition. Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr.. Home: Territory and Identity. J. Macgregor Wise. The Material Value of Color: The Estate Agent’s Tale. D. J. B. Young. Index.

Julieanna Preston is a Senior Lecturer of Interior Design at the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. This book extends her interdisciplinary practice and commitment to further developing interior design as a spatial art and intellectual endeavour. Mark Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in architectural theory and design studio at Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand. Recent publications include guest editor of Surface Consciousness (Wiley–Academy, 2003) and co–author of Moments of Resistance (Archadia Press, 2002) with Julieanna Preston.