Sponsored by the Journal of Interior Design; Under the auspices of Interior Design Educators Council

Culture is at the heart of interior design education and practice. Used broadly to describe “a way of life,” the notion of culture is often tied to different languages, foods, dress codes, religions, traditions and rituals, as well as interior environments that support diverse ways of living. Design scholarship and pedagogy have long included questions around culture. Yet, much remains to be explored before a coherent and holistic model for how the interior design discipline relates to culture can be developed.

The urgency of defining a direction for the discipline on questions around culture is tied partly to the changing American demographics and the global nature of the profession. Both add to the need to nurture interior design students who are global citizens and can navigate complex political, social, religious, and economic systems in a responsible manner.

As a way to strengthen dialogues around design and culture, the Journal of Interior Design (JID) is hosting a symposium and a special JID issue on design and culture to be published in 2016. In this call for papers, we are seeking scholarly original thoughts on theoretical, pedagogical, and practical ways by which to approach the topic of culture:

  • What role do interior environments play in the production of culture at a time when the local and the global increasingly seem to blend?
  • When and how do design and culture intersect and what are the implications of these intersections for interior design scholarship, education, and practice?
  • Where and when in the curriculum should the complexities around culture be unraveled? And which theoretical approaches, interdisciplinary inquiries, and transformative pedagogies advance our collective understanding of this multi-faceted issue? How for example, can one teach about African vernacula designs while also tackling issues of race, colonization, and inequality?
  • What constitutes cultural competence for interior design students and how can it be assessed both through class objectives and accreditation standards?
  • How do professional organizations and design practitioners respond to culture and in what ways could those relationships be expanded? What are some best practices that can be employed when engaging in design projects abroad?
  • How can theory and practice be bridged with respect to culture?
  • What methodologies can be used in research and education that effectively reveal the complex and multi-faceted relationship between design and culture?

The primary goal of the symposium and special issue is to foster synergies among design educators and other allied scholars who are eager to rethink the field’s relationship to culture and contributions to interdisciplinary discourse. We will begin to identify the potential impacts of present understandings and convictions; explore new audiences and partnerships; put in place ways by which interior design’s body of knowledge around culture can be strengthened, shared, and disseminated; and establish a trajectory for how we want to respond to demographic, political, social, environmental, and technological changes that affect how interior design’s relationship to culture is defined and understood. Our hope is that these conversations will challenge us to move beyond the comfortable and familiar and see the opportunities that arise when “design + culture” is framed in a new light.

Symposium: March 2015, Symposium in Fort Worth, Texas (post IDEC conference).

JID Special Issue: Paper deadline for JID (this is an open call, not limited to symposium authors but we encourage these participants to submit).

2016 JID Volume 41 Issue 3: Special issue on Design + Culture.

JID SPECIAL ISSUE1GUIDELINES:

Authors should follow the standard author guidelines found on JID’s website at Wiley Blackwell.2(ISSN)1939-1668).

Contributions should be in the form of a 5,000-word scholarly paper with up to 8 images and a 250-word abstract formatted in APA or Chicago Manual of Style.** The paper should be an original contribution that includes a purpose, objectives or issues to be explored, method of inquiry, context, discussion, and conclusions. Authors should submit papers via the ScholarOne Manuscripts system on the JID website3

Papers must be original work of the author or authors and have not been previously published or in press. Submissions will be checked for originality using plagiarism-detection software. For questions, contact Dr. Hadjiyanni at thadjiya[at]umn.edu

  • 1. The Journal of Interior Design is a scholarly, refereed publication dedicated to issues related to the design of the interior environment. Scholarly inquiry representing the entire spectrum of interior design theory, research, education and practice is invited. Submissions are encouraged from design researchers and/or practitioners, anthropologists, architects, historians, psychologists, sociologists, or others interested in interior design.

    GUEST EDITOR: Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, Ph.D.
    Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Interior Design program at the University of Minnesota. Her interdisciplinary scholarship investigates how private and public interior spaces impact the lives of immigrant, minority, and marginalized groups. Her research findings and teaching pedagogies have appeared in journals such as Journal of Interior Design, Home Cultures, Space and Culture, and Design Studies. Hadjiyanni is serving as the Editor of EDRA Connections.

  • 2. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/
  • 3. http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/interiordesign