Reassembling the social interior: historical spaces from contemporary viewpoints

Reassembling the social interior: historical spaces from contemporary viewpoints, reveals the richly layered works of artists, designers, craftspeople, gardeners and architects, and their contributions to the construction of interiors, and interrelated exteriors, of the past. Surveying a range of historical periods, this edited volume explores collective meanings embedded within the furnishings and fittings of houses and homes, public and private buildings. The book considers how reassembling and redistancing of historical spaces can have a powerful significance for contemporary audiences, particularly in ways that are relatable and identifiable to shared experiences of work, leisure, family, community, power and politics. In Reassembling the social interior, the authors describe the communicative and interpretative qualities of works that connect with the present-day, by reflecting on, remaking and re-imagining, places, spaces and objects that once filled people’s lives. The contributors to this volume present an absorbing study of houses and homes of the past, from the palatial to austere, detailing the lived experiences of their previous inhabitants, illustrating how such everyday encounters are conveyed phenomenologically, ethnographically, performatively, and practically, across historical distances and into the present. In this sense, Reassembling the social interior foregrounds human relationships in the plan, design, and creation of homes, interiors, and environments, past and present.