Performative Interior Design in the Criminal Courtroom

Abstract

This paper engages with the idea that interior design is a performative practice. The central question of interest is dramaturgical rather than instrumental: How do building interiors “act” and how do these performances construct a particular definition of the situation? We critically bring into play related academic discussions of “political interiors” and “the good organization” by exploring the built environment of the court of law. The good organization is an ideal‐type used to help identify and understand the deficiencies of actual organizations. We show that ontological politics is at work when performative design enables problematic realities. This study relied on a microethnographic research method using participant observation as the data collection strategy. It focused on a Canadian interior design project that implemented a workplace violence assessment in the criminal courtrooms of the Nova Scotia justice system. We use theatrical performance as a research lens, drawing on dramaturgy, as a fruitful way to engage with the concept of political interiors. This expands beyond mainstream epistemological assumptions about the grounds for knowing. We find that criminal courtrooms, as the physical expression of the good organization, are rooted in questionable design assumptions that are seldom examined. The nominalist stance in this paper promotes a more complete understanding of the realities of interior space that are socially constructed through physical settings that create, preserve, and promote hierarchy, personal stigma, and theatricality.

Room for truth: a new ritual for meaning making in a physical digital future

“…Contrast the private domestic experience to a public courtroom experience, where visitors encounter mahogany benches, high-ceilings, and Grecian columns, and are not allowed to lay down or shift around furniture. At court, people are sworn to tell the truth, a process which is messy and intimate, but they are surrounded by materials and architecture which communicate something very different from truth-telling: power, control, rigidity, and intimidation (Corrigan, Robertson & Anderson, 2018).…”

The Conveyance of the Japanese Atmosphere to Visitors as a Performance at Marugame Udon, Solo Paragon Lifestyle Mall

“…Other studies in the field of restaurant interior design have been conducted to reveal the connection between lifestyle and the determination of interior elements (Rachmawati, 2017), the principles frequently used in modern Japanese restaurants (Grigorieva, 2012), and color as an identity formation (Tantanatewin & Inkarojrit, 2016). Interior studies using performance theory as a basis have been conducted by Georges-Etienne Carriere (2020) on the connection between the performance of Brooke Astor's life as a socialite, writer, and philanthropist and the identity of her estate's interior and by Corrigan et al (2018) on observations in the criminal court space using dramaturgical principles. However, no interior study has viewed space and everything that exists and happens inside it as a form of performance.…”