The Story of the Interior

An exhilarating and eclectic volume on the social, cultural, and technological history of interior design from prehistory to the present day, exploring how spaces shape our lives.

The majority of our lives are spent indoors, yet we rarely, if ever, stop to ask ourselves the origins or reasons behind the ideas and forms of our interior spaces. From traditional nomadic dwellings to state-of-the-art airports, The Story of the Interior explores an exciting array of inside spaces from around the world to reveal how the fundamental elements of a room have evolved and endured.

Organized in three parts—The Room, The Private Interior, and The Public Interior—the book presents a fascinating account of how the interior has been conceived and thought of from antiquity to the present day. By calling to attention the most basic elements of inside space—walls, doors, windows, furniture, ambience to name a few—this engaging exploration delves into how private and public interiors actively shape the way we live, work, learn, and play.

Using a thematic approach, author Graeme Brooker digs into the elements of the interior found in both historic spaces and cutting-edge contemporary interiors. The book spans a wide range of iconic and off beat examples. Brooker deftly guides readers through interiors as diverse as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Olafur Eliasson’s The weather project, the Prada store in Marfa, Texas, and Sou Fujimoto’s NA House, as well as the rock-cut Buddhist temples of India, medieval European castles, and ancient Egyptian tombs, to unveil the drastically different and surprisingly similar spaces that surround us. The result is a fascinating tour of global interiors, tracing the genesis and evolution of these spaces and how they help us understand human presence and behavior.

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