The Handbook of Interior Architecture & Design

The interior and its design is a subject that encompasses a vast and diverse range of education, research and practise. It is a discipline that spans ideas as complex and diverse as human behaviour, anthropology, cultural geography, history and technology. The interior is often used as a vehicle for researchers and practitioners to gain insight into social issues such as patterns of consumption, gender, identity and politics, much of which is done through the analysis of inhabited space. It is also a multi-disciplinary practice that overlaps with architecture, fashion, furniture, exhibition design, graphics, and installation art. Multiplicity is at the core of Interior Designs identity. Until recently, the interior design discipline has primarily been viewed through a limited lens of history and vocational techniques. The stage has now been set to reassess the interior to reveal the dynamic discipline it has become. The word ‘interior,’ describes an architectural space that is best understood in contrast to the ‘exterior.’ Unlike architecture, which is all encompassing of the built environment, the interior does not stand alone, instead, it is attached to –architecture, –design, and –decoration. The differences between these areas vary greatly, from legal responsibility as to what a designer can and cannot structurally alter, to associations of taste, trends and shopping. All of these areas equally contribute to the making of interiors, but the terminology, ‘Interior Design', bridges architecture and decoration while expanding to include a multitude of areas outside of the built environment. The material concerns of interior design are space, planning, furnishing, light, colour and detail. The immaterial concepts of the interior are its histories, theories, psychological and technological issues. Thus, any interior is a measure of cultural, economic, political and technological resources and beliefs. It is through these connections that its identity is formed. The Interior Design Handbook does not claim one title as the authoritative definition of Interior Design. Instead the collection of essays and chapters in this Handbook builds upon interior designs multiplicity and the evolving nature of the discipline. This Handbook does not limit Interior Design to one definition, rather, its scope is broadened as it permeates into architecture, decoration, technology, environment, demographics and new forms of media as seen in this collection of essays. Because the field is rapidly expanding to include emerging paradigms, Interior Design is increasingly becoming more inclusive of tangent disciplines outside of Architecture and Decoration. This handbook consists of a series of newly commissioned essays that address past, current and future practices within the interior. Essay contributions will be made by an international array of scholars to provide a global forum for a comprehensive range of texts, critical reflections and unique insights. It aims to contextualise current debates regarding the environmental and spatial arts such as Interior Design, Interior Architecture and Interior Decoration, and explores their overlapping discourses with spatially related disciplines, and endeavours to present current thinking from across the world. It aims to make clear ideas already prominent in the field of Interiors and clarify the interdisciplinary aspects of design research, theory and practice.