Experience and Inhabitation (Key ideas: place, identity, body, gender, culture, belonging, thresholds)
Ardner, Shirley. 1993. “The Partition of Space.” Excerpted in Intimus. pp. 15-21
von Drathen, Doris. 2005. “Places at the Zero Point.” Reprinted in Toward a New Interior, Weinthal, ed. pp. 27-35
Zumthor, Peter. 2006. “From a Passion for Things to the Things Themselves,” in Thinking Architecture. Birkhauser.
Simmel, Georg. 1903. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
Proshansky, Harold M. et al. 1983. “Place-Identity: Physical World Socialization of the Self.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3: 57–83. Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
Friedman, Alice. 1998. “People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Phillip Johnson,” in Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History. Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
Wise, J. Macgregor. 2000. “Home: Territory and Identity.” Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
McKittrick, Katharine. 2006. “The Last Place They Thought Of: Black Women’s Geographies,” Excerpt from
Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle
Ruddick, Susan. 1996. “Constructing Differences in Public Spaces: Race, Class and Gender as Interlocking
Systems,” Urban Geography, 17(2): 132-51.
Space and Stuff (Key ideas: materials, making, surfaces, objects, color, light, atmosphere)
Luria, Sarah. 1999. “The Architecture of Manners: Henry James, Edith Wharton and The Mount.” Excerpted in Intimus. Pp. 213-220
Pallasmaa, Juhani. 1994. “An Architecture of the Seven Senses.” Reprinted in Toward a New Interior, Weinthal, ed. pp. 40-49
Kingwell, Mark. 2002. “Tables, Chairs, and Other Machines for Thinking.” Excerpted in Intimus. Pp. 173-79
Braham, William. 1999. “A Wall of Books…” (Intimus pp. 56-63)
Tanizacki, Jun’ichiro. 1977. “In Praise of Shadows” (Intimus pp. 335-338)
Lupton and Miller. 1992. “Streamlining: The Aesthetics of Waste.” Excerpted in Intimus. Pp. 204-212
Stone, Sally. 2004. “Re-Readings: Interior Architecture and the Design Principles of Remodelling Existing Buildings.” Excerpted in From Organisation to Decoration
Miller, Daniel. 2008. “Migration, Material Culture and Tragedy: Four Moments in Caribbean Migration.”
Mobilities (3): 397–413.
Politics and Ecology (Key ideas: critique, practice, economics, nature, biophilia, sustainability, well-being)
Hart, Roger. 2002. "Containing Children: Some Lessons on Planning for Play from New York City." Environment and Urbanization 14(2). Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
Gans, Deborah. 2008. “Unbearable Lightness,” in Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, Bryan Bell, ed. pp. 50-55
Mockbee, Samuel. 1998. “The Rural Studio,” in Architectural Design: Everyday and Architecture.
Hayden, Dolores. 1995. “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space,” in The Power of Place. Excerpted in The People, Place, and Space Reader.
Owain Jones and Paul Cloke, “Orchard” from Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in their Place (2002), In The Cultural Geography Reader. pp. 123–142.
Koolhaas, Rem. “Junkspace.” Excerpt from October, vol 100. MIT Press. pp. 175-190.
Ford, Tanisha. 2019. “Beysthetics: “Formation” and the politics of style” in The Lemonade Reader edited by Kinitra D. Brooks, Kameelah L. Martin
Benyus, Janine M. 1997. “Parable of the Prairie” Excerpt from Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.
Imrie, Rob. 2004. “Disability, Embodiment and the Meaning of the Home.” Excerpt from Housing Studies, Vol.
19, No. 5, 745–763.
Graduate Thesis Summer Assignments
Annotated Theory Readings Due First Week of Fall Classes
You will receive an assigned reading list. PDFs of these readings will be available on SharePoint. The readings include a range of seminal texts exploring some of the main themes and ideas in interior design. The readings are mostly excerpts drawn from these readers:
Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston, eds. 2006. Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader.
Lois Weinthal, ed. 2011. Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory.
Graeme Brooker and Sally Stone, eds. 2013. From Organisation to Decoration: An Interiors Reader.
Jack Gieseking, William Mangold, et al, eds. 2014. The People, Place, and Space Reader.
You should invest time in understanding the main ideas of the readings and how they relate to and shape the discourse of interior design. To do so you may have to look up projects or other writings that are referenced in the articles. In some cases you may find it useful to go to the full-length or original publications.
Your assignment: read the selections on the list and for each reading, prepare a short annotation, including:
What are the key terms? How are the defined or expressed?
Why was this written? What issues are at stake?
Briefly summarize the argument of the author.
What is the context? When, where, with whom, in response to what?
What is your opinion of the position of the author?
These readings are intended to spark ideas related to your thesis project and help you figure out how your interest relates to the discourse and practice of interior design. You may find it useful to peruse the readers that contain these excerpts as well as looking at their citations to understand what other literature might be relevant.
Use these readings, in conjunction with you own interests, to identify and articulate a topic for your thesis.
Topical Bibliography Due First Week of Fall Classes
After you have settled on a topic, prepare a list of readings, references, and relevant projects. To accomplish this task, it will be necessary to familiarize yourselves with the libraries at your disposal, which include not only the Drexel Library, but a variety of subscription services and other university and specialized libraries including the Avery Library at Columbia University.
Please make use of our program’s research guide on the library website.
http://libguides.library.drexel.edu/interior
Once you are into the libraries, it will be important for you to learn about the kinds of literature that exist on your topic of interest and the general themes and concerns. You should draw on literature of a variety of types and from a range of sources, such as primary documents, secondary materials, videos, websites, and other media. When you are broadly familiar with the relevant literature, prepare a bibliography of 10-20 key references that help to inform your topic. This list will be the starting point for the literature review that will be developed during the fall term.
Sample Solution