Academics, research students and practitioners are invited to submit contributions that engage with interior design/interior architecture theory and practice for the 2020 issue of IDEA JOURNAL directed by the theme Interior Technicity: Unplugged and/ or Switched On.

PROVOCATION

Interior Technicity: Unplugged and/ or Switched On invites reflection on how interiors have always been augmenting entities and how they continue to be so—in other words, extending, facilitating and consolidating bodies within socio-cultural environments. Rather than seeing an interior as an ‘inside’ in opposition to a world beyond, it asks what modes of ‘folding inward’ have equipped and enabled the spatial environment? Technicity—the world of tools and technical objects that extend and mediate memory, as Bernard Steigler (1998) describes it—has never been what inside-ness, in its sheltering of life, keeps at bay; mediation is from the start technical, indexed to inscribing practices rich in temporal and embodied implications. By this reading, interiors have always been augmented and augmenting (in the sense of the Latin “augmentare”: to increase, enlarge, or enrich).

This IDEA Journal issue considers this mode of ‘folding inward’ as a condition of an interior’s specificity. Whether it be a small structure such as a tramping hut or a tiny house, a large complex interior environment such as an airport or shopping mall, handmade with local materials such as Somoan fale, or the result of manufacturing processes assembling artificial and pre- fabricated elements as in the case of a space craft, boat or train, interiors are augmented, mediated, generated or embellished by technologies. The effect of these technologies is not neutral; one’s experience of an interior is significantly influenced by the affective resonance of its technologies. 

This issue builds on existing scholarship on the topic of interiors and technology, with special mention of the 2012 issue of Interiors: Design, Culture, Architecture edited by Anne Massey and John Turpin titled “Special Effects: Technology and the Interior Experience.” In doing so, this issue seeks to expand the knowledge on the topic by way of contributions that critically reflect, analyse or theorise on a specific (built or un-built, new or historic) interior. We are interested in contributions that address these questions:

• How do interior technologies bear out their allegiances to various forms of political and economic assemblages while making (seemingly) life better, more efficient, more productive, and more comfortable?
• How do interior technologies serve to meet the minimum standards of human welfare relative to air, light, water and well-being as outlined by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals?
• What new blended realities and spatial possibilities are being instigated by innovative uses of photogrammetry, virtual reality, augmented reality, laser-scanning, machine learning, and remote sensing?
• What cultural references, positions and implications do interior technologies offer?
• What influence do interior technologies have on privacy, safety and well-being?
• What is the aesthetic signature of an interior technology?
• What is the materiality of an interior technology? What happens at its boundary or edge condition?
• How do interior technologies, especially overlooked, antiquated, unorthodox or ingenious spatial contraptions confirm, challenge or speculate on what we understand or assume an interior to be?
• In a broader context, what is the significant impact of rapidly advancing and widely accessible information and social technologies that are driving the revolutionary upheaval through all that can be conceived as ‘interior’? 
• How do new mediations between environments, bodies, technology and media, including biofeedback, performative actions and affective gesture, sensory and atmospheric production, challenge or expand our understandings of interiors? 
• How are interiors implicated in a shifting relationship [convergence?] between bodies and technology.

Contributions for this issue can take one of the following forms:

• DESIGN RESEARCH PAPERS that demonstrate development and engagement with interior design/interior architecture history, theory, education and practice through critique and synthesis. The focus is on the documentation and critical review of both speculative research and practice-based research. 
• PROJECT REVIEWS that critically evaluate existing built and un-built design-based works which seek to expand the nature of spatial and theoretical practice in interior design/interior architecture and associated disciplines.
• VISUAL ESSAYS that use a combination of visual and graphic imagery (with or without text) to describe, communicate or represent an interior space or experience through a specific lens, approach or critical position.
• INTERVIEWS with prominent theorists, scholars, academics, practitioners or other experts from the interior design/ spatial design/ interior architecture their associated fields.
• REFEREED STUDIOS that represent the nature and outcomes of refereed design studios which have either been previously peer reviewed in situ and/or critically discussed through text and imagery for the IDEA JOURNAL.
• PROPOSALS FOR BOOK REVIEWS: to encourage debate into the emerging literature dedicated to the expression and expansion of the theory and practice of interior design/interior architecture

EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI): Authors are invited to register their interest by 20 August 2019 on The IDEA Journal website (using the “MAKE A SUBMISSION” button on the right-hand column): http://idea-edu.com/journal/index.php/home/index. An EOI is a 1-page PDF document that includes the author(s) name, affiliation (if any), email address, working title, name and location of the specific interior, the form the contribution will take, one key image of the interior, and a brief statement outlining the approach, question or issues that will be explored. The EOI is not refereed. The EOI is a signal of the author’s intent to submit a full draft; it provides the editorial team with a sense of the topics being addressed and the scope of the review process. Guidelines for the full submission can be found on the above website as well.

Questions specific to the IDEA Journal and/or this themed issue can be directed to the Chief Editor Julieanna Preston:[email protected].