Thinking Inside the Box

Thinking Inside the Box: A Reader in Interiors for the 21st Century
Edited by Ed Hollis, Alex Milton, Drew Plunkett, Frazer Hay, Andy Milligan & John Gigli
Middlesex University Press

Interiors is a slippery discipline. Among all designed artefacts, interiors themselves are uniquely ephemeral and hard to define. The practice of interiors is relatively unregulated. The history of interiors is patchy and contested. The theoretical basis of interiors is largely unexplored in comparison to those of other disciplines. How, therefore, might we speculate about the role, validity and purpose of interiors in the twenty-first century? Thinking Inside the Box is a reader designed to help students, academics, thinkers and practitioners of interiors do just that.

Thinking Inside the Box is a collection of essays by prominent thinkers in the field of interiors, from Mark Taylor, co-author of `Intimus’ to Shashi Caan, the practitioner, and former head of interiors at Parsons, the new School of Design in New York. They address themes ranging from cushions, curtains, and feminism to the relationship between the interior and the enclave in the contemporary age of terror; from the regulation of the profession of interiors to the representation of the interior on the page, and in history.

This diverse reader is simply and clearly organised into four main sections:

• What is interior design? – Debates on the identity, the profession, and the regulation of interior design
• Why do we do interior design? – Essays on the relationship between theory and practice in interiors
• Histories of interior design – Stories from the practice of interiors and meditations on the history of the discipline
• How do we teach interior design? – Case studies from, and reflections upon, the education of the interior designer.