What is interiors? An essay on lining, concealing, and making one’s mark

Theme Journal – What is Interiors? In his 1994 book, What is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines, Paul Shepheard draws a distinction between the questions ‘What is Architecture?’ and ‘What Should Architecture Be?’ Through this slight but meaningful adjustment, he tries to get underneath the seemingly distinct categories that define the discipline such as history, design, research, and materials, opening up in this way a discussion of how these categorizations emerged in the first place. What are the underlying conditions, events, and questions that enabled their formation? Resisting singular answers such questioning instead prompts a discourse that expands disciplinary knowledge. The title of the journal, Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture situates interiors vis-a-vis a triad of terms that hold multiple connotations, suggesting a range of possible relationships that shape our intellectual understanding of interiors. This special theme issue seeks to question presumed disciplinary frameworks, much like Shepeard did, in order to define critical trajectories for new interiors scholarship and practice

Travelling Companions

Catalogue to accompany exhibition 'Travelling Companions' at Art at the Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge. Curator Ro Spankie, Artists Fay Ballard + Judy Goldhil

Drawing out the censors’ room

Psychoanalysts make a distinction between an actual space and the memory of a space; one’s house and the psychic construct of home. The latter, constructed from experiences of the childhood home(s), is a place that holds us, contains us, and is instrumental to functions of anchoring, identity and refueling1 and can be referred to as the ‘first house.’ A gap exists between the actual space and the ‘first house’ as the mind distorts the relationship between actual form and the space in one’s memory; although a childhood home may still exist, it is, at the same time, unreachable. Not only do buildings and particularly their interiors evolve over time through change in use and wear and tear, but so too does the inhabitant. While there are conventions governing the drawing of the structure of a house, the topography of these other less tangible interiors is unstable to say the least and offers an absorbing but slippery territory for any attempt at representation. This paper attempts a description of a ‘first house,’ not of an individual but of an institution, the Royal College of Physicians, London, focusing in particular on a panelled interior known as the Censors’ Room. This paneling has moved with the Physicians over the years, being installed in three consecutive buildings. The proposition is that the ‘first house’ offers a useful analogy to interiority both as an intellectual construct and in the challenges it sets up in terms of representation

Revisiting Sigmund Freud’s Diagrams of the Mind

One of the original uses of the word ‘interior’ was to describe that which belongs to or exists in the mind or soul, that is, the mental or spiritual, as opposed to that which is bodily. The etymology of the term gives a clue as to how interior space functions in a manner that is different from the architecture that contains it. This article explores the analogy of architecture as body and the interior as mind through the act of drawing out Sigmund Freud’s study and consulting room, with reference to Freud’s diagrams of the mind. Working with diagrams, the article will demonstrate a relation between Freud’s conceptual shift from descriptive anatomy to hypothetical structures of psychoanalysis and the diagrammatic ordering of the spatial arrangement of his practice

‘Revisiting Sigmund Freud’s Diagrams of the Mind’

An architect by background, my research centres on the role of the drawing in the design process, in particular in relation to the creation of interior space. The word interior comes from the Latin interior meaning inner, or inter meaning within and one of its original uses was to describe that which is ‘belonging to or existing in the mind or soul; mental or spiritual, as distinguished from that which is bodily’. While attempting to define what distinguishes an interior from the architecture that contains it I came across a set of diagrams by Sigmund Freud drawn at the point that his investigations shifted from the physical anatomy of the brain to the abstract functional workings of the mind. Could this shift from descriptive anatomy, to brain function and the hypothetical structures of psychoanalysis give insight into the relationship between the body/architecture and the mind/interior

Book-worlds and ordering systems as sites of invention

The making and structuring of books provides an alternative site of invention and knowledge production to architects, alongside practice and theory. The book-worlds examined here - S,M,L,XL, by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, foa’s ark, by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid Moussavi, and 49 Cities, by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood (Figure 1) - depart from the model of the practice monograph by constructing book-contexts within which they re-situate architectural, or utopian urban projects. Their constitutive devices, namely lists (S,M,L,XL), taxonomy (foa’s ark), and typology (49 Cities), are used as instruments of cosmography, that is, as devices that organize representations of the world and articulate world-views. At the same time, they constitute instruments of cosmopoïesis, that is, inventions of new worlds that are created within the books. Each of the three books uses classification to construct new contexts, which place architectural or urban utopian projects in new relationships, through juxtaposition (S,M,L,XL), through a taxonomical tree that diagrams evolution (foa’s ark), or a typological matrix that correlates data (49 Cities). The three books adapt systems of classification to produce new meaning and associate their subject matter with new interpretations and implications

Seminar: What or Who is Your Travelling Companion?

Science meets humanities in this seminar exploring the notion of 'travelling companions'. This seminar is held in conjunction with the exhibition Travelling Companions (2 March – 10 April 2020) at the Alison Richard Building. We invite you to join an interdisciplinary panel to discuss how familiar objects can act as emotional and intellectual travelling companions, both in actual time and as remembered (internalised) objects, their function and the stories they tell changing over the course of a lifetime. From a personal belonging charged with significance to a star guiding you across the globe, join us to investigate this theme. Speakers: Dr Ro Spankie: Curator of Travelling Companions. Is a designer, teacher and researcher and a Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster. Ro is the author of ‘An Anecdotal Guide to Sigmund Freud’s Desk’ (Freud Museum London). Judy Goldhill: Artist Travelling Companions. Judy is a photographer, maker of films and artist’s books and artist in residence at the Physics and Astronomy Department, University College London. Recent exhibition ‘Breathe’ Freud Museum London 2018, and Raki’a screened at the Venice Biennale as part of the Alive in The Universe project, 2019. Fay Ballard: Artist Travelling Companions. Fay makes drawings, recent exhibitions ‘Breathe’ Freud Museum London and ‘Transylvanian florilegium’, National Gallery, Romania, 2018. Visiting Artist Hammersmith Hospital 2017 & 2018, she sits on Arts & Health Committee, Imperial NHS. Sarah Pickman: BA Anthropology, University of Chicago and MA Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center, USA. Sarah is currently researching material culture of exploration and travel based at Yale University. Revd Dr Ayla Lepine: Assistant Curate, Hampstead Parish Church London, former lecturer art history and architectural history (Courtauld Institute of Art and Nottingham University). Ayla trained for priesthood at Westcott House Cambridge, ordained 2019. Dr Ana Araujo: Architect, teacher and researcher at the Architectural Association, she completed her PhD at UCL in 2009 and is interested in the relationship between architecture and psychoanalysis. Ana is currently working on a book on the American designer Florence Knoll. Stephen M. Pompea: Observatory Scientist, NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, Tucson Arizona. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Leiden and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Arizona. Benjamin Weil: PhD candidate researching blood donor activism surrounding the exclusion of men who have sex with men (MSM) from blood donation at University College London. Interests include; Science and Technology Studies; Queer Studies; Queer Science and Technology Studies; HIV/AIDS; Risk; Sex and Porn Studies; Citizenship Studies; Affect/Emotions; Social Movements