This study investigates the Shishinden, the principal ceremonial hall of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, as a site where spatial hierarchy, ritual movement, and material atmosphere converge to construct a unique form of interiority. Rather than treating the hall merely as a stylistic or historical artifact, the paper analyses how interior experience is actively produced through embodied ritual practices, symbolic spatial organisation, and sensory orchestration. By focusing on the interaction between architecture, politics, and cultural cosmology, the study demonstrates how the Shishinden functions as an affective interior that communicates imperial authority and sacred order. The findings contribute to contemporary interiority discourse by highlighting how ritual space can operate as both a physical and symbolic system of meaning.
The work of Norman Foster, often labelled as 'high-tech,' is renowned for its structural expressionism and technological rationalism. However, it is grounded in the conception of a unified whole in which science, technology, and the humanities are inseparable facets that shape both human beings and the spaces they design and inhabit. This article analyses the correlations between the new paradigms established by neuroscience and the design principles of Foster's architecture: the integral conception of reality, optimisation, and energy balance (homeostasis) as survival factors guiding decisions, and the role of perception, emotions, and feelings in the creation and evaluation of architectural and interior design solutions that lift the quality of our lives. This interdisciplinary approach rediscovers Foster's architecture and interior design within a visionary underlying framework of belief and subjectivity, driven by collective narratives and material practices that, through design, intimately connect energy transformations with human happiness. In this convergence are science, technology, sustainability, art, ethics, aesthetics, and happiness, understood as a non-separable unified whole. From this research, an interpretative framework is proposed that repositions technologically advanced architecture within studies of interiority and subjectivity, highlighting its transformative impact.
Hong Kong's dense urban environment, constrained housing, and relentless tempo of everyday life create a context in which solitude is both scarce and valued. This article develops the concept of solitary interiority to capture how moments of solitude in public space generate interiority as a relational condition through the interplay of bodies, atmospheres, and cultural norms. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and multisensory experiential reflection, the article demonstrates how solitary interiority arises from the blurring of boundaries between the domestic and the urban, the self and others, and the private and the public. Individuals extend certain home-like qualities into public spaces, mobilising everyday objects and tacit sensory strategies to negotiate personal boundaries while remaining socially proximate in dense urban contexts. At the same time, solitary interiority operates as a subtle form of urban resilience. Rather than emphasising the qualities of the spaces themselves, individuals frame solitude in relation to urban rhythms and situational transitions, including what they have just endured and what awaits them. Solitary moments offer a vital pause amidst work demands, crowded transport, noisy streets, and the anticipated lack of privacy in cramped domestic environments. In this sense, solitary interiority is both a spatial and psychological quality, enabling urban dwellers to negotiate and build resilience amidst the pressures of high-density urban life.
The disciplines of interior architecture and interior design operate within a world characterised by constant changes. Projecting the future of the interior requires an understanding of how the discipline and practice can manoeuvre exquisitely within such complexities. It calls for design scholarship that promotes resilience as a key condition for responding to constant changes. The interior demonstrates resilience through its capacity to sustain culture, humanistic values, and local sociospatial practices, allowing it to navigate the dynamics of global flux. A call for interior resilience presents an opportunity for interior practices grounded in humanistic and cultural approaches to address uncertainties, instability, and alternative trajectories. This issue of Interiority highlights a series of inquiries and approaches to establish resilience through humanistic and cultural perspectives on interiority. They highlight the interior as a lived environment that manifests changes, sociocultural dynamics, and embodied experiences. They demonstrate the possibilities to produce interiority that promotes the built environment’s resilience, enhancing interior practice’s role toward social and cultural responsibility.
This study examines space modification in one-bedroom-plus condominium units in Bangkok, focusing on the relationship between Generation Y’s characteristics and how they adapt interior layouts to suit their lifestyles. While previous research has addressed flexible housing in general, few studies have focused specifically on how Generation Y modifies space within condominium units to accommodate their needs in the Bangkok context. The study analysed 7,596 one-bedroom-plus units developed in Bangkok and modified by 44 architectural stakeholders to reflect Generation Y's preferences. Using function, partition, and floor indicators, and applying k-means cluster analysis, six spatial modification approaches were identified: open-space layouts, functional space redistribution, comprehensive space reconfiguration, selective partition reconfiguration, integrated bedroom and multifunctional room, and flexible space division. These approaches reveal patterns in how Generation Y negotiates openness, privacy, multifunctionality, and regulatory constraints. The findings contribute to interiority scholarship by demonstrating how Generation Y residents in Bangkok actively shape one-bedroom-plus condominium units to balance openness, privacy, multifunctionality, and regulatory limits. These insights inform flexible residential design that supports ongoing reconfiguration without compromising building integrity, offering guidance for residents, developers, and policymakers towards resilient, user-centred urban living.
