Public Interiority: Exploring Interiors in the Public Realm

Public Interiority reconsiders the limits of the interior and its perceived spaces, exploring the notion that interior conditions can exist within an exterior environment, and therefore challenging the very foundations of the interior architecture field.

Public Interiority contains eight chapters and 16 visual essays that document the historical, material, and social conditions in contemporary cities, reconsidering the limits of the interior, resiliency in design, spatial perception, and territories within curated urban exteriors. Topics include the supergraphics of Black Lives Matter protests, privacy and US Supreme Court landmark cases, Instagram as a quasi-public interior, domestic simulation in Victorian curative environments, the micro-urban commons of public transit, and the timely study uncovering Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s approach to ＂urban interior designing＂, among many others.

Including scholarly and visual essays by experts from a range of disciplines, including architecture, interior architecture, landscape architecture, exhibition design, craft and the visual arts, and design history and theory, this volume will be a helpful resource for all those upper-level students and scholars working in these related fields.

Liz Teston is an associate professor of interior architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the southeast US and a Fulbright Scholar. Teston’s research explores public interiority, design politics, atmospheres, and cultures. Teston’s work has been exhibited in Atlanta, Bucharest, Knoxville, New York, Lincoln, Stockholm, and Venice. Teston hosted the Public Interiority Symposium + Exhibition at the University of Tennessee-this volume is a product of that event. Her essays are found in journals like Interiority, MONU, Journal of Interior Design, and Int/AR, and volumes such as Interiors On Edge, Interior Urbanism Reader, Interior Futures, Interior Architecture Theory Reader.

Ladi’Sasha Jones is a writer, curator, designer, and a member of Public Interiority’s editorial board. Pursuing a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University in the United States, her research explores Black American spatial histories of play and performance. She has written for Aperture, Avery Review, Arts.Black, e-flux Criticism, Gagosian Quarterly, and The Art Momentum, among others. Her project, Black Interior Spatial Thought, was the recipient of a 2021 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Jones holds an M.A. from NYU and a B.A. from Temple University.

Karin Tehve is a professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in the United States, where she coordinates the theory and undergraduate thesis curriculum in interior design. She earned her MArch at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her own research and writing concentrates on taste, media and identity, and their intersection with the public realm. As a member of Interior Provocations, Karin is co-editor for and contributor to Interior Provocations: History, Theory, and Practice of Autonomous Interiors (2020), Appropriate(d) Interiors (2021), and Interiors on Edge (2024). Her book, Taste, Media and Interior Design, was published by Routledge in 2023. Tehve is an advisory board member for Public Interiority.

Amy Campos is a tenured associate professor at California College of the Arts in the United States and Chair of the Interior Design program. Her work focuses on durability and design with a special interest in the impermanent, migratory potentials of the interior. The work spans a variety of scales, platforms, and formats, from inhabited architectural spaces to object and furniture design, as well as writing. Recent publications include Interiors Beyond Architecture (Routledge, 2018) and the chapters Survivalism, Interiorization, and Exclusivity in Interior Futures (Crucible Press, 2019) and Territory and Inhabitation in Interior Architecture Theory Reader (Routledge, 2018). Campos serves as an advisory board member for Public Interiority. Campos is leading research in lighting design and materiality through two Donghia Grants for the Interior Design program at CCA. She was the recipient of the 2013 IIDA Teacher of the Year award and the 2014 ASID Design Luminary Award. She has previously served on the Board of Directors for IDEC. She received her Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.