In interior design, the definition and popular perception of the interior has long been concerned with bounded spaces, and with the relationship between private and public realms. However, two issues have challenged traditional boundaries between interior and exterior, and private and public: first, the emergence of new technological practices, and second, a broader understanding of diverse cultures. Popular perceptions of public and private space are currently being revised, and the interior is increasingly unbound in various ways, as many of the contributors to this volume (and the colloquium which preceded it) show. Both technological and cultural practices challenge and disrupt the common-sense idea of an interior space as a contained enclosure with clearly defined boundaries. Instead, the blurriness and ambiguity between public and private, inside and outside, and interiority and exteriority are challenging understandings of the interior.

This book provides additional perspectives on the shifting understanding of the interior and its recent transformations through case studies of both real and “unreal” places. These include writings about the interiority of rooms, buildings, streets and cities with diverse social, cultural and political contexts, such as the transformation of Soviet-style living spaces in Hanoi and Bishkek; the appropriation of everyday spaces in Tokyo; the uses of fengshui in corporate office towers in Shanghai and Hong Kong; the exploration of urban boundaries in Beirut; and the relationship between making domestic spaces and urban planning practices in Guatemalan communities in Florida. This volume also features chapters on virtual spaces, including one that examines human interaction with spaces of virtual reality in the Vitthala Temple in India, and another that analyses the representation and development of modern interiors through popular tapestries from the 1920s and 1930s.