Leo Wood reviews an authoritative account of how the evolution of taste, technology and commerce has defined the modern interior
The history of interior design is often overshadowed by architectural history, but this new book claims to be the first comprehensive critical account of interiors in Britain over the past century. Its ambition is clear: to disentangle interior design from the architectural narrative and to show it as a discipline shaped by social and cultural change, as well as by client tastes as they have evolved over the last hundred years.
Interior design, as the authors stress, is a modern profession which only really crystallised in the early 20th century. Before then, domestic interiors were shaped by architects, decorators and craftspeople, but there wasn’t a distinct professional identity for interior designers. Given this, and the fact that interior design can respond quickly to shifts in taste, technology and consumer culture (unlike architecture, which tends to move at a slower pace), it seems valuable to look at how the field of interior design has evolved over the last century and what insights we can glean from this.
This book follows the evolution of British interior design through the Art Deco theatres and public interiors of the 1920s and 30s to the post-war period of austerity and reconstruction. It then traces how commercial spaces such as shops, clubs and restaurants became testing grounds for new ideas and materials in the second half of the 20th century, before considering contemporary interiors, where digital technology and the rise of ‘experience design’ redefined what interiors could be.
The book opens with the 1925 Paris International Exhibition, which is not simply a convenient centenary marker but the event that gave rise to the term Art Deco and showcased interiors as complete environments, setting the stylistic tone for British theatres, hotels and restaurants in the following decades. These lavish new commercial interiors combined cutting-edge architectural construction with modern decorative schemes and electric lighting, turning the interior itself into a stage set and bringing contemporary aesthetics to a mass audience.
The book also profiles design personalities throughout each of the chapters, and I particularly enjoyed learning about interior decorator Syrie Maugham (1879–1955), whose experimental approach mixed Regency furniture with modern pieces and who boldly pioneered the concept of an ‘all-white room’, complete with white wool rug, white sofas, white lights and even white hydrangeas. Perhaps a forerunner for the white cube space of the future? I find this book is at its most enjoyable when the narrative intersects with specific designers and their projects.
Flat by David Connor, early 1980s, for the musician Adam Ant (New Romantic), which changed perceptions of interior design and distanced it from Modernist design culture. Radical interiors needed radical clients who were found in the fashion and music industries, particularly Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood who promoted Punk and New Romanticism.
Source: David Connor
Flat by David Connor, early 1980s, for the musician Marco Pirroni (Punk), which crucially changed perceptions of interior design and distanced it from Modernist design culture. Radical interiors needed radical clients who were found in the fashion and music industries, particularly Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood who promoted Punk and New Romanticism.
Source: Julian Powell-Tuck
Café Bongo, Tokyo, by Nigel Coates (mid 1980s). Based in Britain, Coates became the most influential interior designer in Japan when his iconoclastic reworkings of European architectural traditions provided a compelling counterpoint to the prevailing minimalism of Japanese design.
Source: Nigel Coates
Alexander McQueen store, Tokyo, by David Collins (early 2000s). David Collins built an international reputation for luxurious retail, hospitality and presidential interiors that softened doctrinaire European Modernism with the decorative devices of Art Deco and reworkings of traditional craft techniques, like plaster relief mouldings. Collins built an international reputation and 90% of his studio’s work is now for overseas clients.
Source: Copyright: David Collins. Photo: David Kendall
Flat conversion, Barbican London, by Nick Coombe. The influence of hardline European Modernism prevailed, and prevails, amongst architects and has been categorised as Minimalism.
Source: Copyright: Nick Coombe. Photo: Luke Wright
Michiko Koshino store, London, by Fern Green (late 1980s). A competition winning project that established Fern and Green’s reputation and, throughout the 1990s they became a leading retail designers, working both for fashion stores in Britain and Europe - and high street chains like Boots.
Source: Copyright: Fern and Green. Photo: Alan Williams
X Generation by Rasshied Din (late 1980s). Din established his reputation with this offshoot of the minimalist Next chain, aimed at younger shoppers for whom the minimalist aesthetic of the original stores and their offerings were too staid. Its success brought Din Associates a comprehensive battery of significant clients across a wide range of activities, from the V&A to terminal 5 at Heathrow.
Source: Copyright: Rasshied Din. Photo: John O'Brien
Metropolis Recording Studio, London, by Powell-Tuck Associates (early 1990s).
The conversion of a lofty depot for London trams into a recording studio complex, designed to combine sophisticated facilities and a glamorous working environment. Its scale and the drama of its internal elements, which were shaped by acoustic principles, gave it singular status.
Source: Copyright: Powell-Tuck Associates. Photo: Richard Davies
Room 68, London, by Steve Jensen (1990s). Jensen has completed a wide-ranging battery of projects, principally clubs, bars and restaurants but which also include a workshop for Vivienne Westwood and a set for the television programme Big Brother. He has also collaborated on art projects and in his latest liaison is with the Chinese entrepreneur and documentary film maker, Clare Wang, to design a hotel which will reflect the culture of the Yi people of South China. Their next project will be a refuge for Cambodian victims of landmines. Their clients are UN NGOs.
Source: Copyright: Steve Jensen
Al Mamlaka Social Dining, Riyadh, TGP International. Gabriel Murray, design director at TGP, talks about how enormous, dramatically sculpted towers give national identities to Middle Eastern states, but emphasises that it is the interiors occupying their ground levels that provide mechanisms for cultural cohesion for the increasingly affluent and outward looking populations.
Croft Lodge, Hereford, David Connor with Kate Darby. Faced with the problem of what to do with a decaying structure beyond the help of conventional renovation techniques but too characterful to deserve demolition Connor protected its characterful imperfections within a pristine corrugated metal clad structure, designed by Darby. He made minimal alterations, just enough to stabilise the existing structure which again became a dwelling - one that relished the evidence of its age.
Source: Copyright: David Connor. Photo: James Morris
Silo restaurant, London, Nina+Co. Nina Woodcroft had worked within the interior design profession on luxury projects before becoming concerned about the ecological consequences of their construction and operation. In 2014 she formed nina+co, specialising in the design of environmentally responsible interiors and techniques. Her finished projects offer evidence that the exploration of alternative materials and low energy production techniques can lead to new design vocabularies.
Source: Copyright: Nina+Co. Photo: Sam A Harris
Camden House, London, Powell-Tuck Associates. Much of PTA’s work is carried out within the tight spaces of typical London terraced houses. The conversion of what had once been a 10,000sq.ft. Milkwood television studio, built for the Monty Python team, presented them with the challenge of bringing a human scale to the vast volumes of the various structures, in particular the lofty 4000sq.ft principle studio.
Source: Copyright: Powell-Tuck Associates. Photo: John Offenbach
The Silver Entrance to the Park Lane Hotel’s ballroom, which combined Swedish green marble dadoes with decorative metalwork and lighting by Walter Gilbert and murals by his daughter, Margot. The space is rich in detail and forms an appropriately jaunty prequel to the ballroom, reached by descending a grand stairway at its inner end.
Source: Photo: Bruce Peter
The Empress of Britain’s two-deck-high First Class dining saloon was located amidships in the hull where sea motion would be least apparent. Featuring a striking scheme of direct and indirect illumination, including a Lalique centrepiece and table lamps, and panelled with murals by Frank Brangwyn, who also designed the inlaid floor, it was among the most striking liner interiors of its era.
Source: Photo: Bruce Peter
The Queen’s Room on the Queen Elizabeth 2 by Michael Inchbald had an ingeniously designed ceiling to give an illusion of greater height with the oblong cut-outs orientated to emphasise its length. The furniture too was of Inchbald’s design, complementing the forms of the trumpet columns.
The final chapter of the book, which takes us from the turn of this century to the present day, inevitably addresses themes such as digitisation, sustainability and globalisation. It was encouraging to see designers such as Ilse Crawford and Nina Woodcroft included. Crawford’s human-centred practice and Nina+Co’s use of bio-based materials throughout her designs highlight how sustainability and wellbeing are reshaping the field.
The book is ambitious in scope and rigorous in detail. It reads more like a textbook than a coffee-table book, but the consistency of visual references throughout helps anchor the text. This book is written by authors with an academic background and experience in design history publishing: Drew Plunkett has written many books on interior design detailing, while Bruce Peter has a specialist interest in ship design, and the sections on cruise ship design earlier in the book are unexpected but fit well within the book’s thesis.
The authors draw a sharp line between ‘interior design’, which they align with commercial practice, and ‘interior decoration’, which they place in the domestic sphere. While this clarifies the book’s focus, it arguably oversimplifies the profession: many residential projects also involve spatial and material interventions that go beyond decoration. That blurring of roles is, in fact, part of what makes collaboration between architects and interior designers so vital.
The commercial interior design sector is therefore this book’s distinctive focus rather than residential interior decoration (as it is referred to by the writers). This makes it a useful reference book for those working in retail, hospitality and office design, and its emphasis on commercial projects offers architects valuable insight into the kinds of spaces where collaboration with interior designers is most critical.
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