Designing the modern interior : from the Victorians to today / ed. by Penny Sparke ... [et al.].

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2010.

Designing the Modern Interior reveals how the design of the inside spaces of our homes and public buildings is shaped by and shapes our modern culture. The modern interior has often been narrowly defined by the minimalist work of elite, reforming architects. But a shared modernising impulse, expressed in interior design, extends at least as far back as the Victorians and reaches to our own time. And this spirit of modernisation manifested itself in interiors, designed both by professionals and by amateurs, which did not necessarily look modern and often even aimed to imitate the past.
Designing the Modern Interior presents a new history of the interior from the late 19th to the 21st century. Particular characteristics are consistent across this period: a progressive attitude towards technology; a hyper-consciousness of what it is to live in the present and the future; an overt relationship with the mass media, mass consumption and the marketplace; an emphasis on individualism, interiority and the 'self'; the construction of identities determined by gender, class, race, sexuality and nationhood; and the experiences of urban and suburban life.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• General Introduction
• Part 1 The Late-Nineteenth-Century Interior (1870-1900)
• Introduction
• 1 Plate Glass and Progress: Victorian Modernity at Home
• 2 Privacy and Supervision in the Modernised Public House Interior 1872-1902
• 3 The German Interior at the End of the Nineteenth Century
• Part 2 The Early-Twentieth-Century Interior (1900-1940)
• Introduction
• 4 Taking Amusement Seriously: Modern Design in the Twenties
• 5 'The scene in which the daily drama of personal life takes place': Towards the Modern Interior in early 1930s Britain
• 6 The Modern Interior as the Geography of Image, Space and Subject
• 7 'Leaving Traces'. Anonymity in the Modernist House
• 8 The Geography of the Diagram: The Rose Seidler House
• Part 3 The Mid-Twentieth-Century Interior (1940-1970)
• Introduction
• 9 Hans Scharoun and the Interior
• 10 New Environments for Modern Living: 'At Home' with the Eameses
• 11 Italy's New Domestic Landscape, 1945-1972
• 12 Ocean Liners, Resort Hotels and the Architecture of Leisure
• 13 Nationalism and Design at the End of Empire
• Part 4 The Late-Twentieth-Century Interior (1970 - present)
• Introduction
• 14 The Dark Side of the Modern Home
• 15 Locating the Modern Impulse within the Japanese Love Hotel
• 16 The Contemporary Interior: Trajectories of Biography and Style
• 17 Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED): Encouraging Sustainable Living in the UK
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index

Author notes provided by Syndetics