Making Spaces/Proximities : Navigating theory and redundancy.

Outpost 120224

Studio Spaces.

A Scriptorium, a space within the wall.

St Jerome at his study.

Making Spaces/Proximities : Navigating theory and redundancy.

INTIMUS

Interior Design Theory Reader.

Julieanna Preston.

Mark Taylor.

Declaring a field of inquiry that lies beyond disciplinary boundaries of design and architecture, all of the texts included in this reader establish generative and active exploration of interior design as a practice informed by the intellectual scholarship surrounding its cultural production and creative practice. They are not foundational in that they do not recognise or declare an originary state or propose any fundamental canon. Collected in order to catalyse creative associations within this operational field, the texts in this volume are presented via an organisational strategy that refuses both chronologic and thematic structure.

Essentially they present a connectivity to do with inhabitation and spatial presence as outlined in the examples above that is at once distant, by discipline, and intimate, by content.

Proximities/On interior theory related to the specifics of inhabitation and bodily presence.

What is being teased out hear is a multifaceted dialogue between that which is theoretical in nature, abstract, knowledge-based and immaterial and that which is grounded, physical, phenomenal and concrete. Not wishing to pull these apart, but rather to encourage convergence, this book identifies a territory of emerging points that collectively register connections of understanding with reference to a field tentatively named as the theoretical domain of interior design.

This conception forms a working method for searching and organising texts, and for mapping their locations as a relational matrix. Described in other theoretical discourse as rhizomatic, networked or diagrammatic, matrices foster the formation of connections among notions as opposed to defining or creating singular isolated entities.

However, one image in particular harboured virtual potentials pertinent to our inquiry.

Within the pages of Emily Post's book 'The Personality of a House' is a photographic plate attributed to New York architect William Laurence Bottomley. This seemingly unassuming image gently frames the prevailing issues, topics and texts in this volume. 

The doors reveal a space between the opaque panelling, a space within the wall occupied by a small vanity or dressing-table. Another mirror backs the niche which doubles the light, and the ruffles and tassels of swagged curtains are softly gathered at the boundary of this closet and cloister. The room seems to be dressed in parity to the self-reflective body that inhabits it. And yet, it is a private space,  a space for one, a space for an individual.

The mirrors reflect very little of the greater surroundings, but the scale of the panelling and the floor-to-ceiling height help to extrapolate that this secret space occurs as an informality among the far more social and self conscious home atmosphere.

How might this 'Perfect Example of Dressing-Table hidden behind panelling when not in use' be physically, socially and theoretically constructed? How are the intricate details of curved timber work on the doors and stool indicative of current and historical values of ornament, surface, gender and politics? While the doors mask the presence of the dressing-table, the mirrored interior expands infinitely. What appears as a small enclosure is a mode of liberation. What one might assume to be self-indulgent or decadent decoration may be found to be a sign of self-expression.

While the architectural room is wrapped with abstract notions of time and space, this small alcove inhabits its periphery as a pocket where body is central, maybe even fluid, and space is temporal, perhaps even subjective. 

The archive of discursive fields of inquiry.

Navigating theory and redundancy.

On a theoretical praxis, a matrix for gathering material from the archive.

The matrix is intended to be used as a surveying instrument and ordering device with the purpose to catalyse cross- and inter-disciplinary insights.

A matrix or diagram mediates between the virtual potentials generated by the data ( the field of essays/excerpts) and the actual book. The matrix is to some extent graphic shorthand used to declare latent structures of organisation. The diagram is also generative, and can be used to order possible readings.

Seeking theory informative to interior design/spatial practices by trusting that through the act of searching various sources/databases/resources a range of associations and connections would verify an emergent practice. Such associations are fuelled by the abstract and diagrammatic quality of an organising tactical matrix in its flexibility to seek casual and coincidental links among related and sometimes assumed disparate disciplines. By looking for correspondences between seemingly unrelated research and practice, and by moving laterally between existing systems and categories, not in a haphazard manner but through productive leaps generated by rules that had consequential and significant outcomes. This process enabled the gathering of material from several disciplines when the linear historical model seemed inapplicable, and thematic structures too constraining.

Coupled with its ability to engage the complexity of the real, the matrix assists in making sense of the found texts and their potential reformations. Conceptually, such order is not made towards the specificity or hegemony of a discipline, but rather to turn outwards and mobilize forces of action and imagination between matter and information.

Pragmatically, the matrix positions each text relative to a disciplinary body of knowledge (social, political,philosophical, technological, gender and psychological) and then relative to prominent interior design/spatial practice issues (material, colour, light, space, decoration and furnishing). Within this methodology an interpretive role is played in ordering these texts and the multiple locations in which each text could be placed.

Producing an interdisciplinary database search using terms typically associated with interior design as a decorative craft, an architectural speciality, a spatial art or a physical articulation of social interaction located essays framed by a wide range of types of theory, genres of writing and sources of textual discourse.

Many of the researched essays did not declare that they are concerned with 'interior theory', but instead they either operated critically on spaces, places and inhabitation of the built environment's interiors, or offered observations and abstractions of use and inhabitation that engender a criticality in this collection of texts. To include this material raises questions of what constitutes theory, and how theory relates to the critical study of the interior.

Thresholds of experiential concern.

Architectural Body/Transactive Memory.

The reclamation of theory, other spaces, further sites for production and inquiry. 

In their book 'Intersections : Architectural Histories and Critical Theories', Iain Borden and Jane Rendell outline nine epistemological tendencies on which theory is constituted within critical discourse. Rather than champion a narrow definition or description, their categories are expansive and inclusive, and when considered relative to the scope of our inquiry assist in substantiating numerous items that would normally fall outside the limits of architectural or design theory, most notably some that take the form of turn-of-the-century advice literature or historical analysis of a place or activity.

Of particular interest are those texts that are observational in nature or assert new paradigms of dwelling in light of technology. In most cases, selection of such texts proved a matter of locating the speculative mode of inquiry within the written work, registering the inferences and extending them as conduits to other contemporary works or notions. In other cases, it became an exercise in dwelling in the period, revelling in the details specific to when the text was written and recognising that theory and critical history have been defined and couched differently across time.

For if theory is conditioned by inquiries and speculation about what occurs between events, situations, objects and actions, then the method of inquiry or the analytical device employed is of primary concern.  

Art Works/Spatial Relations.

Beyond the formal values/qualities of drawing.

Figuration and the spatial inter-personal concerns of/found in drawing.

Extending the body in drawing.

Jenny Saville.

Cecily Brown.

Manuel Neri.

David Smith.

Atmospheres/Light.

The Flame of a Candle.

Charcoal, Alternative Photography.

Gaston Bachelard. 

CLAY.

Mythical city of Orion. 

Speculative retreats/Tarkovsky/Krishnamurti/Hannsjorg Voth.

Making for life on the hospitality of the body.

The architectural body and the body in care.

INTERIOR SURFACES.

Photographic Exhibition/Retrospective.

Desiring into the pathology of the image.

Breaking into corporeal and subjective spaces.

Erasures/temporalities within the materiality of photographic sensations and their memories.