ABSTRACT
If the interior design world was small in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, it had its own Big Bang in the early 1980s. With a series of seminal projects five individuals created templates that caused sensations and set standards. Those individuals were Ben Kelly, Eva Jiricna, John Pawson, and David Connor and Julian Powell-Tuck, who are paired because they began by working together. The publication of the photographs in the Architectural Review, and shortly after in the newly launched Interiors magazine, caused a sensation, giving shape to something dormant in the collective imagination of interior design students and young practitioners. That a project so patently outrageous had not only been conceived but translated into a viable interior suggested that there were extraordinary things to be done, and that the extraordinary could become mainstream. In 1981 Jocasta Innes had published Paint Magic, demonstrating transformative effects that could be achieved by inexperienced professionals and determined amateurs.
