ABSTRACT
Interior Provocations: History, Theory, and Practice of Autonomous Interiors is based on the straightforward proposition that the interior is not reducible to the ground in relation to architecture’s figure. The introduction to the volume explores the concept of autonomy, as a way to identify the disciplinary concerns of architecture and interior design, and as a way to distinguish them from one another. This is predicated on the understanding that autonomy is a term critical to architectural theory’s ongoing consideration of self-definition. Strict autonomism suggests that cultural artifacts are to be distinguished from what they do. Interior design is recognizable through use, as an inhabited condition. Instrumental autonomism intimates that the artifact does something not done, or done the same way, by other kinds of artifacts. The identity of interior design is bound to its representations, itself recognizable as a form of media. Interior design history, theory and praxis, at every turn, dismantles the idea that either form is critical to maintain efficacy and identity. Through its embrace of the open boundaries of both space and query, interior design is responsive and dynamic, privileging richness over disambiguation.
