ABSTRACT
“Oblique/Interior” explores obliqueness as a mode of creative disruption that challenges the status quo in interiors. By appropriating existing notions of the oblique, obliquity, and obliqueness in and beyond design—including the architect Claude Parent’s theory of the oblique function, the theorist Sara Ahmed’s notion of the queer body as oblique, and the economist John Kay’s argument in favor of obliquity as a path to achieving complex goals—the essay reflects upon what it means to develop the field of interiors beyond what is considered as appropriate in both theory and practice. In the section titled “The Field: Oblique Actions, Oblique Ground,” the essay outlines how various engagements with obliqueness across a range of fields may be brought together and used as a conceptual framework for evaluating one’s creative practice in interiors. This includes considering the motives underlying the work, the relationship between intentions and outcomes, and the direction of one’s approach, as well as navigating the field of interiors subjectively. A selection of design projects produced by the author is the focus of the essay’s other main section, titled “The Game: Oblique Practices, Oblique Interiors,” examined through the framework of obliqueness. The essay’s structure reflects the author’s engagement with theory that is reflective rather than generative in that the design work in question serves not as its proof of concept to which one arrives; instead, the aim is to construct a relationship between practice and theory in order to articulate what shape oblique interiors may take and what future directions they may reveal. As such, the essay’s conclusion—presented as an opening rather than a closure—focuses on a deck of cards inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies made expressly for the practice that may be referred to as Oblique Interiors. As an iterative game, it serves as a tool for generating oblique paths for engaging—indeed, playing—the field of interiors.
