Mapping the Interior: The Consolidation of an Idea Across Disciplines, Movements, and Geographical Regions in the Early-to-Mid 20th Century

Abstract

The use of the word interior to refer to the inside of a house emerged in the 19th century and assumed some significance in modernist discourses. While the rise of digital media has shaped contemporary notions of space, these notions remain indebted to an idea of interiority that coalesced early last century. This discussion demonstrates the significance of the interior to modernists of different stripes and its consolidation as an idea across disciplines and geographical regions, despite the divergent attitudes it encompassed. Le Corbusier and Sigmund Freud viewed the interior and interiority as problematic, a view that found extreme expression in Richard Neutra’s domestic architecture. At the same time, visual artists such as Salvador Dali and the architects Alvar Aalto and Eileen Gray saw the interior as crucial to modern living, an approach revisited in the participatory art, architecture, and therapy that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.