Interior Design on Edge: History, Theory, Praxis

Interior Design on Edge explores ways that interiors both constitute and upset our edges, whether physical, conceptual or psychological, imagined, implied, necessary or discriminatory.

The essays in this volume explore these questions in history, theory, and praxis through a focus on different periods, cultures, and places. Interior Design on Edge showcases new scholarship that expands and contests traditional relationships between architecture, interiors, and the people that use and design them, provoking readers to consider the interior differently, moving beyond its traditional, architectural definition. Focusing on the concept of interiority considered in a wider sense, it draws on interdisciplinary modes of investigation and analysis and reflects the latest theoretical developments in the fields of interior design history and practice.

With new research from both established and emerging authors, this volume will make a valuable contribution to the fields of Interior Design, Architecture, Art and Design History, Cultural History, Visual Culture Studies, and Urban Studies.

Erica Morawski, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design History at Pratt Institute in New York. Her research investigates how design mediates relationships between state and populace through approaches that seek to privilege underrepresented histories through a focus on the Hispanic Caribbean within a global context. She is currently completing a book that explores the role of tourism design, particularly hotels, played in shaping domestic and international politics and questions of national sovereignty in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. She has published in the Journal of Design History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and has essays in The Politics of Furniture: Identity, Diplomacy and Persuasion, Design History Beyond the Canon, Imperial Islands: Art, Architecture and Visual Experience in the US Insular Empire after 1898, and Coastal Architectures and the Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global South.

Deborah Schneiderman, RA, LEED AP, is Professor of Interior Design at Pratt Institute and principal/founder of deSc: architecture/design/research. Her praxis explores the emerging fabricated interior environment and its materiality. Schneiderman’s Published research includes the books Inside Prefab: The Ready-Made Interior, The Prefab Bathroom, Textile, Technology and Design: From Interior Space to Outer Space (with Alexa Griffith Winton), Interiors Beyond Architecture (with Amy Campos), and Interior Provocations: History, Theory, and Practice of Autonomous Interiors (with Anca I. Lasc, et. al.). She has exhibited work and lectured internationally including the Storefront for Art and Architecture, The Center for Architecture, and Van Alen Institute. Schneiderman earned her BS in Design and Environmental Analysis from Cornell University and MArch from SCI-Arc.

Keena Suh is a Professor in the Interior Design department at Pratt Institute where she teaches design studios, electives, and construction courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels while coordinating the department’s construction-related courses. Her pedagogical focus is in fostering innovative learning and teaching opportunities through community-based, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative learning. She is a co-editor of Interior Provocations: History, Theory and Practice of Autonomous Interiors and section editor of Interior Provocations: Appropriate(d) Interiors. She earned her MArch from Columbia University.

Karin Tehve is Professor of Interior Design at Pratt Institute, where she coordinates the theory and undergraduate thesis curriculum in Interior Design. She earned her Master of Architecture degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her experience includes architecture, interiors, and site‐specific art, her research and writing concentrates on taste, media and identity, and their intersection with the public realm. Conference presentations include IDEC, ACSA and Common Ground. She has published in the Journal of Design History, The Journal of Interior Design, The International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design, contributed to Interiors Beyond Architecture, and is co-editor and contributor for Interior Provocations: History, Theory and Practice of Autonomous Interiors and Appropriate(d) Interiors. Her book, Taste, Media and Interior Design, was published by Routledge in 2023.

Karyn Zieve, PhD is Assistant Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Adjunct Assistant Professor CCE in the History of Art and Design Department at Pratt Institute. She earned her MA from University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D from Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Her work investigates cross-cultural communications and miscommunications, particularly those of nineteenth-century France and the Eastern Mediterranean and Northern Africa, as well as questions of historiography, museums and collecting. She is a co-editor of Interior Provocations: History, Theory and Practice of Autonomous Interiors (with Anca Lasc, et. al.) and section editor of Interior Provocations: Appropriate(d) Interiors.