This book looks at interior architecture and design from a contemporary and international perspective. It explores the interior discipline’s theoretical dimension and its pedagogical, professional and creative practices in different settings across the globe.
Theorising Interior Architecture and Design. Identity, Practices, Education, and Beyond looks at interior architecture and design from a contemporary and international perspective. The book takes theory building to be one of the most important activities for a discipline. It explores the interior discipline’s theoretical dimension and its pedagogical, professional and creative practices in different settings across the globe.
Organised in four thematic sections and an epilogue, twenty chapters discuss vital aspects of contemporary interior architecture and design. How has the interior discipline, which for decades has been classified as ‘emerging’ or ‘relatively young’, over the past decades ‘come of age’ academically, in practice, and in theory? Why is the identity of interiors a complex issue, and how does this relate to theoretical concepts like surface, interior/exterior, or time? How can we think about the different roles of creative and professional practice – or about interior education and the way it reflects and shapes interior identities? And what lies beyond supposed disciplinary boundaries?
Theorising Interior Architecture and Design brings together twenty-eight leading, established and emerging interior educators, researchers, theorists and professionals who connect seventeen countries on four continents. Detailed studies of culturally specific interior histories, regional educational perspectives and national professional frameworks are complemented by authoritative theoretical discussions. The book’s scrutinising discourse provides a compelling theorisation of interiors as a multi-lingual, culturally situated discipline. It is essential reading for everyone concerned with interiors – practising, studying or working in educational and professional institutions.
SECTION 1: Identity
1. Interior- Accelerating- in Theory!
2. The Power
of Ornament. Defining Space by Way of Surface Ornamentation
3. Interior
Design and Interior Architecture in Belgium. Diverging Educational Pathways
for the Interior Profession
4. Pivotal Interiors. Intricacy Not Size
5.
Gauging Interior Time SECTION 2: Practices
6. Space as a Test-Site.
Practice-based Research put into Critical Spatial Practice
7. Disciplinary
Perspectives. The Role of Interior Architects in Adaptive Reuse Projects in
Iran
8. Italian Interior Reuse. A Dialogue with the Past
9. Philosophy in
Practise. Practice Research PhDs in Interior Design SECTION 3: Education
10.
An Interior Approach. The Pedagogy of Adaptive Reuse
11. Interior Design
Education in Saudi Arabia. Local and International Influences
12. Swiss
Perspectives. The Future of Interior Architecture is Interdisciplinary
13.
Research and Design. Reflecting on Postgraduate Interior Education SECTION 4:
Beyond
14. The Interior Beyond
15. The Expanded Interior Field. Experiencing
the Spatial Temporalities of Performance Space
16. Public Interiority. An
Urban Experience, Independent from Architectural Interiors
17. Of Being Lost.
An Exploration of Interiority and Psychogeography
18. On Boundary-Drawing
Practices. An Ecosystemic Take on Interiors Epilogue
19. The Autonomous and
the Unified Interior
20. Towards an International Education
Carola Ebert is Professor of Interior Design, History and Theory of Architecture and Design at Berlin International University of Applied Science (BI), Germany. At BI, she has served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design, and Head of the interior MA programmes. Her current research focuses on interior-specific approaches to history, theory and reuse, on research-based education, on interior pedagogy, and the studio-history/theory nexus. Recent publications include Dis/Assembled. Unmaking Interiors as an Adaptive Reuse Approach to Disciplinary Identity (2024), Interior Reuse. Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Keeping It All Together (2025), and co-authored contributions to this volume and The Cambridge Handbook of Undergraduate Research (2022).
