Designing the Modern Interior
From the Victorians to Today
Published on 1. June 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-84788-287-5 (ISBN)
Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2010. Designing the Modern Interior reveals how the design of the inside spaces of our homes and public buildings is shaped by and shapes our modern culture. The modern interior has often been narrowly defined by the minimalist work of elite, reforming architects. But a shared modernising impulse, expressed in interior design, extends at least as far back as the Victorians and reaches to our own time. And this spirit of modernisation manifested itself in interiors, designed both by professionals and by amateurs, which did not necessarily look modern and often even aimed to imitate the past. Designing the Modern Interior presents a new history of the interior from the late 19th to the 21st century.
Particular characteristics are consistent across this period: a progressive attitude towards technology; a hyper-consciousness of what it is to live in the present and the future; an overt relationship with the mass media, mass consumption and the marketplace; an emphasis on individualism, interiority and the 'self'; the construction of identities determined by gender, class, race, sexuality and nationhood; and the experiences of urban and suburban life.
Particular characteristics are consistent across this period: a progressive attitude towards technology; a hyper-consciousness of what it is to live in the present and the future; an overt relationship with the mass media, mass consumption and the marketplace; an emphasis on individualism, interiority and the 'self'; the construction of identities determined by gender, class, race, sexuality and nationhood; and the experiences of urban and suburban life.
Reviews / Votes
This volume is destined to become a model of disciplined interdisciplinary analysis. This exceptionally disciplined approach to a necessarily interdisciplinary convergence about modernity achieves model scholarship. Ample images situate and visually direct the discussion. Essential. L. Farooque, CHOICE MagazineMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
100 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 189 mm
Weight
687 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84788-287-5 (9781847882875)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Penny Sparke is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) at Kingston University and author of Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration and An Introduction to Design and Culture: 1900 to the Present. Anne Massey is Professor of Design History at Kingston University and author of Designing Liners: A History of Interior Design Afloat and Interior Design since 1900. Trevor Keeble is Head of the School of Art and Design History at Kingston University. Brenda Martin is the Curator of the Dorich House Museum at Kingston University.
Content
General Introduction: Penny Sparke PART ONE: THE LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTURY INTERIOR (1870-1900) Introduction: Emma Ferry 1. Plate Glass and Progress: Victorian Modernity at Home, Trevor Keeble, Kingston University 2. Privacy and Supervision in the Modernised Public House Interior 1872-1902, Fiona Fisher, Kingston University 3. The German Interior at the End of the Nineteenth Century Sabine Wieber, Roehampton University PART TWO: THE EARLY-TWENTIETH-CENTURY INTERIOR (1900-1940) Introduction: Penny Sparke 4. Taking Amusement Seriously: Modern Design in the Twenties, Christopher Reed, Lake Forest College, Chicago 5. 'The scene in which the daily drama of personal life takes place': Towards the Modern Interior in early 1930s Britain, Elizabeth Darling, Oxford Brookes University 6. The Modern Interior as the Geography of Image, Space and Subject, Irene Nierhaus, Bremen University, Germany 7. 'Leaving Traces'. Anonymity in the Modernist House, Hilde Heynen, KU Leuven Universitat, Belgium 8. The Geography of the Diagram: The Rose Seidler House, Charles Rice, University of New South Wales, Sydney PART THREE: THE MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY INTERIOR (1940-1970) Introduction: Penny Sparke 9. Hans Scharoun and the Interior, Peter Blundell Jones, The Univrsity of Sheffield 10. New Environments for Modern Living: 'At Home' with the Eameses, Pat Kirkham, The Bard Graduate Centre for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York 11. Italy's New Domestic Landscape, 1945-1972, Penny Sparke, Kingston University 12. Ocean Liners, Resort Hotels and the Architecture of Leisure, Alice T. Friedman, Wellesley College, Massachusetts 13. Nationalism and Design at the End of Empire, Anne Massey, Kingston University PART FOUR: THE LATE-TWENTIETH-CENTURY INTERIOR (1970 - present) Introduction: Trevor Keeble 14. The Dark Side of the Modern Home, David Crowley, Royal College of Art 15. Locating the Modern Impulse within the Japanese Love Hotel, Sarah Chaplin, Kingston University 16. The Contemporary Interior: Trajectories of Biography and Style, Alison J. Clarke, University of Applied Arts, Vienna 17. Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED): Encouraging Sustainable Living in the UK, Anne Chick, Kingston University Endnotes Bibliography Index