Seventeenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Historically, architecture has been thought of, shown, designed, and analyzed from the inside out. Paradoxically, human beings spend approximately 90% of our time indoors. During the past two years, this percentage has increased even more and highlights the need to reverse the way in which we historically approach and think about architectural and urban projects, shifting the focus of interest towards the interior. Looking at the interior seems pertinent at a time when it is taking center stage both because of the need for forced confinement, because of the recycling of large structures, and the ongoing preservation policies. This change of focus must, in parallel, develop tools to look at the interior as a landscape that stresses the conventions of the architectural project and addresses the problem as something deeper than the interior-exterior dichotomy. The interior is a core concept of architecture, but, at the same time, it constitutes its most fragile area, an area that can be altered and adapted to stylistic, temporal, social, climatic, economic and use changes. The interior becomes a field of disciplinary expansion to explore thermodynamic conditions and activate new ecologies through formal and material configurations. The methodology of the Design course of the degree in architecture aims to think the interior from its formal and material specificity, from its ability to build voids, to enclose air and bring together highly differentiated orders. In this context, the two design studios tested opposing premises: the inscribed interior and the circumscribed interior.