EXPANDED ROLE OF INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION
BACKGROUND
In 1993, John Kurtich and Garret Eakin in their seminal book titled interior Architecture presented a thesis, which called for an interior design practice that addressed humanistic concerns by assimilating the principles and values of parallel disciplines such as art and architecture. They argued that interior architecture, as opposed to interior design, is more than just designing in space but the design of spaces. The existing building therefore becomes the basis for the designing of spaces to support a desired, meaningful purpose through the use of color, light and furnishings. They identified six basic elements how this could be achieved, which made interior architecture the link between architecture and interior design. To support their thesis, several significant buildings and interiors through history were shown demonstrating the expanded role that interior architecture claimed. The examples were singular buildings housing a specific use and of a scale that was in consistent with their purpose. This paper acknowledges that interior architecture is a significant shift towards a more complete understanding and shaping of interior spaces. Although more than ten years have passed since the publication of this book, there is still much contention in the profession with regard to the term interior architecture and the role it plays in the education of an interior designer.
The design of interior spaces has further evolved both in scale and complexities since 1993; such as the many large-scale and interconnected interior environments housing a conglomeration and hybrid of retail, commercial, office and residential spaces. These environments form a large part of our everyday experience in the city and many are also interior pedestrianized passages connecting different parts of the city below and above ground levels.
The growth and increasing interiorization of our every day lives have a long history. The Rockerfeller building in Manhattan can be considered as one of the early modern architectural precedent of such a typology. Going back even further, Ponte Vecchio in Florence, which is both a bridge and habitable structure, may be one of the earliest historical examples in the West. However, the speed, extent and manner in which these extra large interior environments are built across the world currently, especially in Asia and the Middle East, in particular Dubai are unprecedented. For example, the Roppongi Hill project in Tokyo, which Jerde Partnership was involved, has 6 million square feet of interior spaces. One can live, work and entertain without the need to venture beyond the confines of this massive development. Similarly, Dubai boasts of the world’s largest mall with 12.1 million square feet of interior spaces that aims to challenge ‘everything you’ve come to expect from a mall’. At the other end of the spectrum, the giant wholesale retailer Wal-Mart is multiplying throughout the U.S. its ‘big boxes’ architecture that is independent of the specificity of regional identity or character and contains all the conveniences and services provided in a city.
The evolution of interior rooms for leisure and shopping activities can be traced to the early Parisian glass covered arcades in the 19th century. Walter Benjamin, a cultural and literary critic devoted almost 13 years of his life examining these precursors to the modern day shopping malls. Although they do not embody the complexities and diversity of activities in a modern day mixed used developments, these arcades nevertheless marked the transition into the consumer culture of the 20th century. There are however, other examples of interior environment that bear resemblances to a city, incorporating urban elements such as streets, squares and courtyards in the designs.
As far back as in 1995, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhass termed the phenomenon of these enormous buildings housing complex and multi-layered programmatic requirements as ‘Bigness’.
‘Bigness no longer needs the city: it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; or better still, it is the city. If urbanism generates potential and architecture exploits it, Bigness enlists the generosity of urbanism against the meanness of architecture.’ (1995: 515)
According to Koolhaas, ‘Bigness’ is due partly to developments in building technologies such as air-conditioning, elevators and structural systems that enabled buildings to go wider, deeper and higher. These big buildings eventually become autonomous objects in the landscape, hermetically sealed within seamless and artificial environments that have no reference and relationship to the surrounding context. They contain a multitude of uses, services, activities and serve as surrogate public gathering spaces. Koolhaas bemoaned the lack of an understanding of the phenomenon of ‘Bigness’, which would otherwise enabled architects to engage these extra large scale architectural projects with greater awareness of its benefits and pitfalls. For Koolhaas, the pervasive global culture of late twentieth century was shopping. Shopping and the growth of extra large interior environments in cities go hand in hand. Shopping had insidiously became so intertwined with out everyday life that one cannot imagined a building type, be it an airport or museum without it forming an important component of the development.
‘BAA, formerly the British Airports Authority, runs seven British airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, and Edinburgh; four American airports, including Pittsburgh, Newwark, Indianapolis, and Harrisburg; plus naples, Melbourne, and Launceston, Australia. It now generates 60% of its income from retail activities, and bcause of this the company is classified as a retail stock, rather than a transportation stock.’ (2001: 150)
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 1- TORONTO PATH SYSTEM
Often, these interior spaces sustain a large degree of the everyday public engagements in the city. An excellent example is the Toronto underground network of pedestrian spaces called the PATH. The PATH serves as surrogate public gathering space especially during winter, since it is more desirous to meet and conduct one’s daily affairs in a warm and comfortable environment during this time of the year. Organised events promoting new products and services are daily affairs in this space during weekdays. Other events such as a free live telecast of the last European soccer championship tournament was also held in the concourse of one of the office towers to promote greater usage of the large but otherwise empty concourse. During this time, the concourse was transformed briefly into a mini indoor soccer stadium with office workers dressed in soccer jerseys cheering on their respective national or favorite teams. Besides these organised events, the PATH also sustains a plethora of other spontaneous and informal uses and activities. In the foodcourt beneath one of the office building, senior citizens gather daily to meet their friends, while retirees have their morning coffees and work on their crossword puzzles. The fountain in the Eaton centre, one of the major shopping complexes in the PATH network of spaces, is a favorite gathering place for mothers and their babies in strollers during late mornings. Several spaces, especially the empty foodcourts on weekends are used as study corners, while connecting passages become temporary skateboarding venues for teenagers.
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 2- ELEVATED STREETS
In Hong Kong Island, bridges combined with up hill escalator create a continuous elevated pedestrian zone that connects several downtown buildings and landmarks. This strategy of pedestrian and vehicular separation is not a new phenomenon. The Calgary +15 in Canada has a similar system of elevated system of pedestrian walkways while in Toronto, the City Hall in Nathan Philips Square shares a similar aspiration by linking the building to the adjacent Sheraton Hotel across the street. Unfortunately, this was the furthest it has developed in Toronto. There were several contributing factors but the main reason was the strong opposition by many architects, civic groups and urban designers to the forced separation of pedestrians from ground level activities. Surprisingly, the elevated walkway system in Hong Kong is a major success in intensifying life in the city. Leslie Lu, in his article The Asian Arcades Project: Progressive Porosity argued that more could be done to take advantage of these “streets in the air”.
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 3- XTRA LARGE BUILDINGS
In Singapore, the new multi modal transportation hub in the central region of the city combines different forms of transportation with commercial and retail activities. The hub is also linked by covered walkways connecting to adjacent apartments and public amenities such as post offices and library to form a seamless and comfortable network of interconnected spaces between the building interior and the city. In the Euralille in Lille, France, Rem Koolhaas conceived of a masterplan of even greater ambition and scale that houses a conglomeration of offices, hotels, shops, auditorium, exposition and conference spaces and the high speed TGV train connecting to the rest of Europe. The development involved a wide range of stakeholders from government officials to corporate financiers and community groups. It was termed as an instant city conceived to revitalize the economic fortunes of this once neglected region of France.
For many, these self sufficient and privately owned interior environments are even more desirous than the ground level cities that one has to deal with inclement weather, noise, vehicular traffic, fumes and the occasional crime. These large interior spaces become the city as Koolhaas described. Shopping and public life, for better or worse are inseparable in our time. However, the privately owned public spaces are heavily watched by close circuit televisions and constantly patrolled by security guards to ensure that acceptable forms of behaviour and use are maintained at all times of the day and night, while the freedom of expressions and actions one is accustomed to at the ground level city are severely curtailed in these sanitized interior environments.
MAKI’S INVESTIGATION IN COLLECTIVE FORM
In his book Investigations in Collective Form, Fumihiko Maki conceived of a design language and strategy, which architects can use to address the organisation and growth of large collection of buildings within a ‘master program’ through time. The work grew from his concern with the lack of such a strategy in a time of technological developments, rapid pace of urbanization and economic expansions in Japan during the sixties. Maki and several of his post-war Japanese contemporaries were members of the Metabolist group of architects. The Metabolist movement aimed to re-imagine the relationship between architecture and the city not from a narrow functionalist perspective but one that was pliant and could evolve and expand in an organic manner.
Maki alluded to the similarity of spatial experiences in the city with an interior environment through the comparison of spaces in the city with the interior of a building. The intention, in my opinion, is to endow the large multi-program and flexible structure that the Metabolist architects proposed with a level of familiarity and scale of the body, while sustaining an active urban life. It also enables the aggregated and sequential growth of buildings where linkage becomes the primary strategy in retaining connectivity. Interestingly, Maki did not believe that the architect should be concerned with how the actual spaces are being used, since flexibility rendered this unnecessary. He wrote in Theory of Group Form ,
“In terms of urban design, we must create city corridors, city rooms and transportation exchange at strategic points in the city… The architect does not concern with the ways city corridors and rooms will be used.” (1970: 40)
CURRENT INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION AND PRACTICE
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) differentiate the practice of interior design into 2 general categories: residential and commercial, with a further division of the commercial category into seven design specialties such as healthcare, office, retail, etc. Similarly, what an interior designer does as defined by the Foundation for Interior Design Education Research (FIDER) is confined within the boundary of an interior environment. Not surprisingly, most undergraduate and post graduate interior design projects in schools across North America accredited by FIDER are also structured according to comparable lines of distinction to enable a seamless transition from education to practice. Similarly, interior design offices are organized around core expertise centered on these specialties identified by ASID. Although one cannot deny the value of such distinction in practice and the ease in which this can help in teaching basic interior design skills in schools, it becomes challenging when a more expansive and transdisciplinary understanding of emergent global interior design practices is required at graduate level.
EXPANED ROLE OF INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION: INTERIOR URBANISM
Urban design as a discipline is concerned with the manipulation of forms and spaces in the external environment to support meaningful human exchanges and interactions. Its role extends beyond the boundaries of a singular building like architecture. It is concerned with relationships of buildings and open spaces, how they will affect the larger built environment, as well as factors such as economic, social, technological and political forces in shaping the design of the city.
Given the size, complexity and hybridity of programs of may extra large buildings and the above and below ground pedestrian passages, current interior design education, which focused primarily on the shaping of interior spaces within a singular building and a delimited site, is inadequate. How can an interior designer armed with basic knowledge and skills acquired at an undergraduate level confront such interior spaces that transcend our traditional understanding of scale, planning, function and site? For example, the analysis of site and its impact on the design is not a consideration in FIDER’s list of professional standards required in an interior design curriculum. This omission is reasonable if the design of spaces focuses primarily on the interior for a commercial or residential building as in many interior design projects in school. However, current extra large buildings in many cities occupy several million square feet of spaces. Its impact on adjacent buildings and open spaces as well as the configuration of its expansive interiors will require interior designers to be familiar and competent in analyzing the external site factors during the design process, while at the same time sensitive to how the interior spaces can mediate positively with the surrounding built and natural environment.
The graduate program in interior design focusing on interior urbanism therefore serves as a stepping stone towards a more transdisciplinary practice involving urban planners, architects, urban geographers, sociologists and interior designers. If urban design focuses on the macro scale of the external built environment, interior urbanism perhaps can be a discipline that centers on the human dimension within extra large-scale, interconnected interior environments globally. Not unlike John Kurtich and Garret Eakin’s argument in 1993 that interior architecture forms the link between architecture and interior design, interior urbanism in the 21st century connects the city with contemporary expansive and interconnected interior spaces such as mega structures, arcades, underground pedestrian walkways, above ground enclosed link bridges and infrastructural spaces.
Interior urbanism extends beyond the design of these interior spaces. It is concerned with the effects and implications of the connectivity of expansive interior spaces on our everyday lives across social, cultural, political and geographical boundaries. As one cannot clearly separate between the social environment from the spatial since the two realms are interdependent, interior urbanism therefore seeks to identify forms and patterns of organized and spontaneous interior lives in these extra large scale, interconnected spaces, their modes of social exchange, navigation and orientation.
Interior urbanism combines the disciplines of urban design, urban geography, architecture and interior design. The curriculum is designed to challenge students to imagine beyond the confines of a building as containers but as conduits as well in the urban environment; as channels of movements and events across spatial and temporal durations from local to a global scale. As an interior designer, these spaces of movements, exchanges and transactions offer new opportunities for programming, design and the orchestration of a more intense and varied journey of urban experience.
In order to contribute meaningfully to the conceptualization, planning and design process, one would expect an interior designer to have some basic understanding of the sociology of urban spaces and an appreciation of basic urban design principles; such as how buildings and open spaces are designed and planned in cities. This will enable a more comprehensive and in-depth appreciation of the relationship between the interior environments and the city, how people relate and use these spaces and its connectivity to adjacent buildings and open spaces.
Hopefully, it will engender a more sustainable and inclusive design, as well as one that responds to the dynamic and fluid conditions of our time. Since contemporary cities are now connected through global trade, communication and travel, the spatial and temporal experience of buildings as passages and conduits across neighborhoods, districts, cities and countries are an inevitable fact of everyday life and will be intensified. Increasingly, architects and designers are working in places very different from the original places where they grew up and go to school; socially, culturally and politically. The need to develop an awareness of how spaces are appropriated and transformed across local and global scales and in both public and semi public spaces therefore becomes even more critical as a result, if we are to avoid reducing places to self same uniformity.
As part of a short experiment to reveal how much of our life takes place within an interior environment of some degree, I documented a speculative but highly probable scenario of an overseas business trip from Singapore to Toronto and back which took place purely as an interior experience. I began the journey from my apartment to the inter-modal transportation hub via the covered walkway system connecting most apartment blocks in Singapore. The air-conditioned buses took me to the subway trains, which brought me directly to the airport. Commuting across geographical and national boundaries by air, while briefly stopping over at airports and finally arriving at the hotel and office in downtown Toronto via the airport buses and the underground passages of the PATH pedestrian system, one hardly had to step outdoors. Despite the level of comfort and convenience which these connected spaces facilitate in reducing the stress of traveling, one cannot but help notice the increasing homogeneity across most interior spaces globally, such as airport duty free shops or the thematization of these extra large interior environments for the purpose of creating artificial local differentiations.
Is this the sign of public spaces to come? How can an architect or interior designer who sees his/her works as spatial extensions of life in the city into the interior deal meaningfully with these spaces?
CONCUSION
The paper began by illustrating the historical context of individuals who had argued for an expanded definition of interior design education. Several trend setting extra large architectural projects across the world and the increasing interiorization of our everyday private and public lives have extended and transformed that argument to embrace the dynamics and complexities of contemporary cities. The need for an expanded pedagogical approach to graduate level interior design education is an inevitability to equip interior designers with the knowledge, skills and sensibilities to confront meaningfully with these emergent spaces. Current pedagogy in interior design education focusing on the configuring of interior spaces for a singular use, client and within the boundary of an existing building therefore is inadequate as the expanded role of interior design education moves across diverse disciplines from urban design to urban geography. Therefore, this new, expanded pedagogical approach in graduate level interior design education aims to advance a permeable, interconnected and memorable spatial experience of private and public spaces in the city. It encourages active public engagements while seeking out opportunities for the intensification of twenty first century urbanism.
1.Kurtich, John., & Eakin, Garret.(1993). Interior Architecture. Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York.
2.Ibid.
3.Jerde Partnership. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.jerde.com/flash.php
4.The Dubai Mall. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.thedubaimall.com/content/enter.asp
5.The Boxtank Lab. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://lab.theboxtank.com
6.Koolhaas, Rem., & Mau, Bruce. (1995). Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large. 010 Publishers: Rotterdam.
7.Koolhaas, Rem., Boeri, Stefano., Kwinter, Stanford., Tazi, Nadia., Obrist, Hans Ulrich. (2001). 8.Mutations. ACTAR: France.
Lu, Leslie. (2005). The Asian Arcades Project: Progressive Porosity. Perspecta 36: Juxtapositions, The Yale Architectural Journal, 86-91.
9.Meade, Martin K. (1994). Euralille: The Instant City- Development within the Lille Grand Palais in France. Architectural Review. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_n1174_v196/ai_16561934#continue
10.Maki, Fumihiko. (1964). Investigations in Collective Form. The School of Architecture, Washington University: St. Louis.
11.Maki, Fumihiko, "The Theory of Group Form" in Japan Architect (Feb. 1970) p. 40
12.American Society of Interior Designers. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.asid.org/find/About+Interior+Design.htm
13.Foundation for Interior Design Education Research. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.fider.org/definition.htm
14.Professional Standards. (2002). FIDER Accreditation Manual. Retrieved April 24, 2006 from http://www.fider.org/accredmanual.htm
BACKGROUND
In 1993, John Kurtich and Garret Eakin in their seminal book titled interior Architecture presented a thesis, which called for an interior design practice that addressed humanistic concerns by assimilating the principles and values of parallel disciplines such as art and architecture. They argued that interior architecture, as opposed to interior design, is more than just designing in space but the design of spaces. The existing building therefore becomes the basis for the designing of spaces to support a desired, meaningful purpose through the use of color, light and furnishings. They identified six basic elements how this could be achieved, which made interior architecture the link between architecture and interior design. To support their thesis, several significant buildings and interiors through history were shown demonstrating the expanded role that interior architecture claimed. The examples were singular buildings housing a specific use and of a scale that was in consistent with their purpose. This paper acknowledges that interior architecture is a significant shift towards a more complete understanding and shaping of interior spaces. Although more than ten years have passed since the publication of this book, there is still much contention in the profession with regard to the term interior architecture and the role it plays in the education of an interior designer.
The design of interior spaces has further evolved both in scale and complexities since 1993; such as the many large-scale and interconnected interior environments housing a conglomeration and hybrid of retail, commercial, office and residential spaces. These environments form a large part of our everyday experience in the city and many are also interior pedestrianized passages connecting different parts of the city below and above ground levels.
The growth and increasing interiorization of our every day lives have a long history. The Rockerfeller building in Manhattan can be considered as one of the early modern architectural precedent of such a typology. Going back even further, Ponte Vecchio in Florence, which is both a bridge and habitable structure, may be one of the earliest historical examples in the West. However, the speed, extent and manner in which these extra large interior environments are built across the world currently, especially in Asia and the Middle East, in particular Dubai are unprecedented. For example, the Roppongi Hill project in Tokyo, which Jerde Partnership was involved, has 6 million square feet of interior spaces. One can live, work and entertain without the need to venture beyond the confines of this massive development. Similarly, Dubai boasts of the world’s largest mall with 12.1 million square feet of interior spaces that aims to challenge ‘everything you’ve come to expect from a mall’. At the other end of the spectrum, the giant wholesale retailer Wal-Mart is multiplying throughout the U.S. its ‘big boxes’ architecture that is independent of the specificity of regional identity or character and contains all the conveniences and services provided in a city.
The evolution of interior rooms for leisure and shopping activities can be traced to the early Parisian glass covered arcades in the 19th century. Walter Benjamin, a cultural and literary critic devoted almost 13 years of his life examining these precursors to the modern day shopping malls. Although they do not embody the complexities and diversity of activities in a modern day mixed used developments, these arcades nevertheless marked the transition into the consumer culture of the 20th century. There are however, other examples of interior environment that bear resemblances to a city, incorporating urban elements such as streets, squares and courtyards in the designs.
As far back as in 1995, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhass termed the phenomenon of these enormous buildings housing complex and multi-layered programmatic requirements as ‘Bigness’.
‘Bigness no longer needs the city: it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; or better still, it is the city. If urbanism generates potential and architecture exploits it, Bigness enlists the generosity of urbanism against the meanness of architecture.’ (1995: 515)
According to Koolhaas, ‘Bigness’ is due partly to developments in building technologies such as air-conditioning, elevators and structural systems that enabled buildings to go wider, deeper and higher. These big buildings eventually become autonomous objects in the landscape, hermetically sealed within seamless and artificial environments that have no reference and relationship to the surrounding context. They contain a multitude of uses, services, activities and serve as surrogate public gathering spaces. Koolhaas bemoaned the lack of an understanding of the phenomenon of ‘Bigness’, which would otherwise enabled architects to engage these extra large scale architectural projects with greater awareness of its benefits and pitfalls. For Koolhaas, the pervasive global culture of late twentieth century was shopping. Shopping and the growth of extra large interior environments in cities go hand in hand. Shopping had insidiously became so intertwined with out everyday life that one cannot imagined a building type, be it an airport or museum without it forming an important component of the development.
‘BAA, formerly the British Airports Authority, runs seven British airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, and Edinburgh; four American airports, including Pittsburgh, Newwark, Indianapolis, and Harrisburg; plus naples, Melbourne, and Launceston, Australia. It now generates 60% of its income from retail activities, and bcause of this the company is classified as a retail stock, rather than a transportation stock.’ (2001: 150)
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 1- TORONTO PATH SYSTEM
Often, these interior spaces sustain a large degree of the everyday public engagements in the city. An excellent example is the Toronto underground network of pedestrian spaces called the PATH. The PATH serves as surrogate public gathering space especially during winter, since it is more desirous to meet and conduct one’s daily affairs in a warm and comfortable environment during this time of the year. Organised events promoting new products and services are daily affairs in this space during weekdays. Other events such as a free live telecast of the last European soccer championship tournament was also held in the concourse of one of the office towers to promote greater usage of the large but otherwise empty concourse. During this time, the concourse was transformed briefly into a mini indoor soccer stadium with office workers dressed in soccer jerseys cheering on their respective national or favorite teams. Besides these organised events, the PATH also sustains a plethora of other spontaneous and informal uses and activities. In the foodcourt beneath one of the office building, senior citizens gather daily to meet their friends, while retirees have their morning coffees and work on their crossword puzzles. The fountain in the Eaton centre, one of the major shopping complexes in the PATH network of spaces, is a favorite gathering place for mothers and their babies in strollers during late mornings. Several spaces, especially the empty foodcourts on weekends are used as study corners, while connecting passages become temporary skateboarding venues for teenagers.
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 2- ELEVATED STREETS
In Hong Kong Island, bridges combined with up hill escalator create a continuous elevated pedestrian zone that connects several downtown buildings and landmarks. This strategy of pedestrian and vehicular separation is not a new phenomenon. The Calgary +15 in Canada has a similar system of elevated system of pedestrian walkways while in Toronto, the City Hall in Nathan Philips Square shares a similar aspiration by linking the building to the adjacent Sheraton Hotel across the street. Unfortunately, this was the furthest it has developed in Toronto. There were several contributing factors but the main reason was the strong opposition by many architects, civic groups and urban designers to the forced separation of pedestrians from ground level activities. Surprisingly, the elevated walkway system in Hong Kong is a major success in intensifying life in the city. Leslie Lu, in his article The Asian Arcades Project: Progressive Porosity argued that more could be done to take advantage of these “streets in the air”.
INTERIOR DESIGN AND THE CITY 3- XTRA LARGE BUILDINGS
In Singapore, the new multi modal transportation hub in the central region of the city combines different forms of transportation with commercial and retail activities. The hub is also linked by covered walkways connecting to adjacent apartments and public amenities such as post offices and library to form a seamless and comfortable network of interconnected spaces between the building interior and the city. In the Euralille in Lille, France, Rem Koolhaas conceived of a masterplan of even greater ambition and scale that houses a conglomeration of offices, hotels, shops, auditorium, exposition and conference spaces and the high speed TGV train connecting to the rest of Europe. The development involved a wide range of stakeholders from government officials to corporate financiers and community groups. It was termed as an instant city conceived to revitalize the economic fortunes of this once neglected region of France.
For many, these self sufficient and privately owned interior environments are even more desirous than the ground level cities that one has to deal with inclement weather, noise, vehicular traffic, fumes and the occasional crime. These large interior spaces become the city as Koolhaas described. Shopping and public life, for better or worse are inseparable in our time. However, the privately owned public spaces are heavily watched by close circuit televisions and constantly patrolled by security guards to ensure that acceptable forms of behaviour and use are maintained at all times of the day and night, while the freedom of expressions and actions one is accustomed to at the ground level city are severely curtailed in these sanitized interior environments.
MAKI’S INVESTIGATION IN COLLECTIVE FORM
In his book Investigations in Collective Form, Fumihiko Maki conceived of a design language and strategy, which architects can use to address the organisation and growth of large collection of buildings within a ‘master program’ through time. The work grew from his concern with the lack of such a strategy in a time of technological developments, rapid pace of urbanization and economic expansions in Japan during the sixties. Maki and several of his post-war Japanese contemporaries were members of the Metabolist group of architects. The Metabolist movement aimed to re-imagine the relationship between architecture and the city not from a narrow functionalist perspective but one that was pliant and could evolve and expand in an organic manner.
Maki alluded to the similarity of spatial experiences in the city with an interior environment through the comparison of spaces in the city with the interior of a building. The intention, in my opinion, is to endow the large multi-program and flexible structure that the Metabolist architects proposed with a level of familiarity and scale of the body, while sustaining an active urban life. It also enables the aggregated and sequential growth of buildings where linkage becomes the primary strategy in retaining connectivity. Interestingly, Maki did not believe that the architect should be concerned with how the actual spaces are being used, since flexibility rendered this unnecessary. He wrote in Theory of Group Form ,
“In terms of urban design, we must create city corridors, city rooms and transportation exchange at strategic points in the city… The architect does not concern with the ways city corridors and rooms will be used.” (1970: 40)
CURRENT INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION AND PRACTICE
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) differentiate the practice of interior design into 2 general categories: residential and commercial, with a further division of the commercial category into seven design specialties such as healthcare, office, retail, etc. Similarly, what an interior designer does as defined by the Foundation for Interior Design Education Research (FIDER) is confined within the boundary of an interior environment. Not surprisingly, most undergraduate and post graduate interior design projects in schools across North America accredited by FIDER are also structured according to comparable lines of distinction to enable a seamless transition from education to practice. Similarly, interior design offices are organized around core expertise centered on these specialties identified by ASID. Although one cannot deny the value of such distinction in practice and the ease in which this can help in teaching basic interior design skills in schools, it becomes challenging when a more expansive and transdisciplinary understanding of emergent global interior design practices is required at graduate level.
EXPANED ROLE OF INTERIOR DESIGN EDUCATION: INTERIOR URBANISM
Urban design as a discipline is concerned with the manipulation of forms and spaces in the external environment to support meaningful human exchanges and interactions. Its role extends beyond the boundaries of a singular building like architecture. It is concerned with relationships of buildings and open spaces, how they will affect the larger built environment, as well as factors such as economic, social, technological and political forces in shaping the design of the city.
Given the size, complexity and hybridity of programs of may extra large buildings and the above and below ground pedestrian passages, current interior design education, which focused primarily on the shaping of interior spaces within a singular building and a delimited site, is inadequate. How can an interior designer armed with basic knowledge and skills acquired at an undergraduate level confront such interior spaces that transcend our traditional understanding of scale, planning, function and site? For example, the analysis of site and its impact on the design is not a consideration in FIDER’s list of professional standards required in an interior design curriculum. This omission is reasonable if the design of spaces focuses primarily on the interior for a commercial or residential building as in many interior design projects in school. However, current extra large buildings in many cities occupy several million square feet of spaces. Its impact on adjacent buildings and open spaces as well as the configuration of its expansive interiors will require interior designers to be familiar and competent in analyzing the external site factors during the design process, while at the same time sensitive to how the interior spaces can mediate positively with the surrounding built and natural environment.
The graduate program in interior design focusing on interior urbanism therefore serves as a stepping stone towards a more transdisciplinary practice involving urban planners, architects, urban geographers, sociologists and interior designers. If urban design focuses on the macro scale of the external built environment, interior urbanism perhaps can be a discipline that centers on the human dimension within extra large-scale, interconnected interior environments globally. Not unlike John Kurtich and Garret Eakin’s argument in 1993 that interior architecture forms the link between architecture and interior design, interior urbanism in the 21st century connects the city with contemporary expansive and interconnected interior spaces such as mega structures, arcades, underground pedestrian walkways, above ground enclosed link bridges and infrastructural spaces.
Interior urbanism extends beyond the design of these interior spaces. It is concerned with the effects and implications of the connectivity of expansive interior spaces on our everyday lives across social, cultural, political and geographical boundaries. As one cannot clearly separate between the social environment from the spatial since the two realms are interdependent, interior urbanism therefore seeks to identify forms and patterns of organized and spontaneous interior lives in these extra large scale, interconnected spaces, their modes of social exchange, navigation and orientation.
Interior urbanism combines the disciplines of urban design, urban geography, architecture and interior design. The curriculum is designed to challenge students to imagine beyond the confines of a building as containers but as conduits as well in the urban environment; as channels of movements and events across spatial and temporal durations from local to a global scale. As an interior designer, these spaces of movements, exchanges and transactions offer new opportunities for programming, design and the orchestration of a more intense and varied journey of urban experience.
In order to contribute meaningfully to the conceptualization, planning and design process, one would expect an interior designer to have some basic understanding of the sociology of urban spaces and an appreciation of basic urban design principles; such as how buildings and open spaces are designed and planned in cities. This will enable a more comprehensive and in-depth appreciation of the relationship between the interior environments and the city, how people relate and use these spaces and its connectivity to adjacent buildings and open spaces.
Hopefully, it will engender a more sustainable and inclusive design, as well as one that responds to the dynamic and fluid conditions of our time. Since contemporary cities are now connected through global trade, communication and travel, the spatial and temporal experience of buildings as passages and conduits across neighborhoods, districts, cities and countries are an inevitable fact of everyday life and will be intensified. Increasingly, architects and designers are working in places very different from the original places where they grew up and go to school; socially, culturally and politically. The need to develop an awareness of how spaces are appropriated and transformed across local and global scales and in both public and semi public spaces therefore becomes even more critical as a result, if we are to avoid reducing places to self same uniformity.
As part of a short experiment to reveal how much of our life takes place within an interior environment of some degree, I documented a speculative but highly probable scenario of an overseas business trip from Singapore to Toronto and back which took place purely as an interior experience. I began the journey from my apartment to the inter-modal transportation hub via the covered walkway system connecting most apartment blocks in Singapore. The air-conditioned buses took me to the subway trains, which brought me directly to the airport. Commuting across geographical and national boundaries by air, while briefly stopping over at airports and finally arriving at the hotel and office in downtown Toronto via the airport buses and the underground passages of the PATH pedestrian system, one hardly had to step outdoors. Despite the level of comfort and convenience which these connected spaces facilitate in reducing the stress of traveling, one cannot but help notice the increasing homogeneity across most interior spaces globally, such as airport duty free shops or the thematization of these extra large interior environments for the purpose of creating artificial local differentiations.
Is this the sign of public spaces to come? How can an architect or interior designer who sees his/her works as spatial extensions of life in the city into the interior deal meaningfully with these spaces?
CONCUSION
The paper began by illustrating the historical context of individuals who had argued for an expanded definition of interior design education. Several trend setting extra large architectural projects across the world and the increasing interiorization of our everyday private and public lives have extended and transformed that argument to embrace the dynamics and complexities of contemporary cities. The need for an expanded pedagogical approach to graduate level interior design education is an inevitability to equip interior designers with the knowledge, skills and sensibilities to confront meaningfully with these emergent spaces. Current pedagogy in interior design education focusing on the configuring of interior spaces for a singular use, client and within the boundary of an existing building therefore is inadequate as the expanded role of interior design education moves across diverse disciplines from urban design to urban geography. Therefore, this new, expanded pedagogical approach in graduate level interior design education aims to advance a permeable, interconnected and memorable spatial experience of private and public spaces in the city. It encourages active public engagements while seeking out opportunities for the intensification of twenty first century urbanism.
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2.Ibid.
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