“Stiffened from long sleep in the background of scholarly life, the scholar’s body yearns to exercise its muscles. Sleepy from long inactivity, it aches to restore its sensibilities.” (Paul Stroller, Sensuous Scholarship, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, p. 21)

Whether one adheres to the terminology of creative scholarship, research-creation,practice-based research, practice-led research or artistic research, qualititative research in art, design and the creative arts in general, has shifted in recent decades to embrace a wide range of practices, approaches and expressions that acknowledge the generation of new knowledge through creative modes of inquiry. In this paradigm, creative works such as durational performances, architectural projects, interactive media installations, films, and interior designs, have the capacity as affective spatial experiences and/or materially constructed environments to generate, in and of themselves, new understanding.

If we take this potential seriously, as Natalie S. Loveless suggests, it will give artists and designers the opportunity “to marshall new methods that allow us to tell new stories, stories that demand new research literacies and outputs”; “to revision and re-craft—to re-story—our disciplinary practices.” (RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (2015), pp. 53)

This special issue of the Journal of Interior Design welcomes visual essays and design research papers that embrace, demonstrate and test these ambitions as elocutions, elaborations or expositions, in other words, via contributions that render new insights to the creative work and tell new stories. Both modes of contribution focus on a creative work or set of creative works specific to interior design and include a written text that reaches beyond mere description, documentation and reporting. The text operates to support, expand and question the creative work, reveal its underpinnings and speculate upon what unforseen understandings and sensibilities the work pries open as new knowing. In both cases the opportunity is ripe to explore the use of voice, style and format as a means of complimenting the creative work or investigating a new narrative. The creative work can be new, recent or historic in nature; it can be created by the author or not. The creative work can be published previously, but the textual narrative should be new, unpublished and advance our understanding of interiors and/or interior design practice or education.

Visual essays are understood to communicate the ideas by using visual and verbal language. They will often also have written elements which are integrated and linked with the visual elements of the text. While demonstrating and presenting speculative research and practice-based visual media, the visual elements of the essay form an integral part of an argument, interpretation, reading or idea expressed in an interior design. Rather than rely on the authority of textual languauge, images, photographs, drawings, sketches and diagrams play a pivotal role in shaping an intellectual inquiry; it is important that the visual essay maintains a level of criticality. Visual essays should target 1-8 high resolution images and 2000-4000 words depending on the image-word relationship at play. Examples abound in recent years, though explicit to interior design/architecture and offering a range of approaches and strategies, one might refer to:

• Julieanna Preston, “Dear Rosa”. IDEA Journal: Design Activism, guest edited by Dr. Lorella Di Cintio, 2014, pp. 4-13.
• Chapters 4-8, by Hammond, Preston, Leski, Weinthal and Chee respectively in Lori Brown (ed.), Feminist Practices: Interdicisplinary approaches to women in architecture, Ashgate, 2001, pp. 83-168.

Design research papers are those that demonstrate development and engagement with interior design/interior architecture history, theory and practice through analysis, critique and synthesis. Images serve to reference the constructed environment under discussion. It is important that such design research papers also reach to generate new understandings that have the potential to re-tell the stories of interior design and offer trajectories for its future as a making-thinking-doing practice. This mode of contributions should be no more than 5,000 words and include 1-8 high quality images.

Note: The Journal of Interior Design has a print and online presence. The latter can host videos.

DUE DATES FOR SPECIAL ISSUE:

1. April 1, 2016 Call for papers
2. July 1, 2016 Registration of Interest – Authors are asked to register their intent to submit a paper by sending a 150-word abstract to Julieanna Preston at j.preston at massey.ac.nz. Please put your surname and “JID On Creative Practice Issue” in the subject line. Registration of interest is not refereed, nor is it requirement to submit. However, the acknowledgement of registration facilitates development of a proposal to full research paper by providing confirmation of fit with the special issue. Recognition of fit does not guarantee publication.
3. April 1, 2017 Full visual essays and papers are due. See submission guidelines below.
4. March 2018 Publication of JID Special issue: Elocutions, Elaborations and Expositions of Interior Design Creative Scholarship

For questions regarding the call for papers, submission deadlines, or anything related to the content of the Special Issue contact Julieanna Preston at j.preston at massey.ac.nz. Please put your surname and “JID On Creative Practice Issue” in the subject line. (In regards to correspondences, please be aware of the time difference as the guest editor is located in New Zealand.)

GUIDELINES FOR JID SUBMISSIONS:

Authors should follow the author guidelines found on JID’s website at Wiley Blackwell.

Technical questions regarding the submission of documents through the ScholarOne website should be addressed to John Turpin at jid.editor at icloud.com.

In addition to the visual essay or design research paper, contributions should also include a 250-word abstract formatted in APA or Chicago Manual of Style. The paper should be aligned with the topic of the special issue and comply with the descriptors above. Authors must submit papers via the ScholarOne Manuscripts system on the JID website (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/interiordesign).
Papers must be original work of the author or authors and are not being considered for publication in other journals. Submissions may be checked for originality using plagiarism-detection software.

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 educators, designers, anthropologists, architects, historians, psychologists, sociologists, or others interested in interior design.

GUEST EDITOR: Julieanna Preston

Dr. Julieanna Preston (PhD RMIT 2013, MARCH Cranbrook 1991, BARCH VA Tech 1983) is Professor of Spatial Practice at the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. She is currently the Research Coordinator for the School of Design, a member of Interior Design/ Architecture Educator’s Association (IDEA) and a peer-reviewer for Journal of Interior Design; Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture; IDEA Journal; Journal of Architecture and Planning; Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture and Journal of Architectural Education, as well as numerous international art and design related conferences, symposiums and publishers.

Julieanna’s creative practice extends across architecture, interior design, spatial art and contemporary philosophy. Recent works explore concepts of vitality, agency and hospitality in durational and site responsive works such as water-logged (Performance Arcade, NZ 2016), IN COLD HEAT (MELT minus20degrees Art and Architecture Biennale, Austria 2016), Reading Labours (with Mick Douglas, Urban Dream Brokerage, NZ 2016), bit-u-men-at-work (with Jen Archer-Martin, Performing Mobilities, Melbourne 2015), Stirring Stillness on a Concrete Plane (Daughters of Chaos, Stockholm 2015), becoming boulder (Water and Peace Festival, NZ 2014), Aue (Puke Ariki Museum, NZ 2014) and Carboniferous Accretions (NIEMME, Newcastle Upon Tyne UK 2014). (See www.julieannapreston.space)

As an advocate for creative practice research, its intellectual inquiry and its capacity to pose new concepts and theories, Julieanna maintains an active writing practice that is both scholarly and experimental in nature. Her recent written works include Performing Matter: Interiors, Surface and Feminist Actions (AADR 2014), “Dear Rosa” (IDEA Journal 2015), “Reconciling Carboniferous Accretions: A Performative Script” (Architecture and Culture 2015), and “Stratified Matter” (Drawing On Journal 2015) proceeded by guest editor of IDEA Journal: Interior Economies (2011) and AD: Interior Atmospheres (2008) and co-editor with Mark Taylor of Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader (2006).