ABSTRACT
Like architecture and interior design themselves, furniture serves a practical function as well as an aesthetic one, so that furniture design is a complex art of compromise between use and beauty and of searching for solutions that satisfy both demands at once. Even so, furniture design customarily departs far more widely from the mere accommodation of function than does building design. In more humble situations where humans are to be accommodated overnight—hotels, camps, prisons, hospitals—the bed becomes the basic unit of interior design, not just as a synecdoche, but also as the basic item of furniture in the facility. It is then, perhaps, seeing clearly the ratio of one bed to one person, that one must be most aware of the bed's intimate nature. It is the piece of furniture that most demands a private treatment; in some periods and it is the piece of furniture that most demands a private treatment.
