On why we can not envision a tesseract : ‘unfolding’ the interior once more (reflections on three representational techniques for the design of the interior)

Abstract

Narrowing in on the drawings made by the furniture maker Gillow and Co. (c.1806 - 1831), this text will examine the notion of hybridity as a tenable representational premise for the design of the interior within the digital age. Stylistically, the link between Gillow and Co.’s work and current practices of interior representations exemplify an amalgamation of sorts. Where both showcases a multitude of drawing techniques harnessed to provide a synoptic impression of the interior in one drawing, as a point of departure, present-day interior projections—in particular, interior collages—emancipate both their mediums and representations in the process of hybridising drawing conventions and images as part of their design language. This endeavour is a historiography of interior spatial representations that begins with the drawing of lines between interior decorators and upholsterers that occurred around the time of this ‘curiosity’ of a technique made its appearance (see Figure 2), to the rise of the professional interior designer and its reliance on the interior perspective render (see Figure 3), and of the practice’s continued ‘unfolding’ under the praxispractice of environmental design and its types of spatial experimentation (see Figure 5). This hybridity of conventions, images and of course, meanings have exposed latent possibilities that have become increasingly useful in the actual design of space in specific levels of scale—cutting across the spatial disciplines through this manner of either representation and lamination. By rendering this history of interior spatial representation as a metaphor of the interior-as-box, this text ultimately aims at advancing how the interior collage as a means of representing the ‘design idea’ is reshaping how interior design notions echoes outwards to influence how other spatial designers conceptualise and design space today.