Ambiguity and Permeability in Historic Modern Interiors: A Challenge for Cultural Heritage and Social Sustainability

Abstract

The restoration and conservation of the interior spaces in nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings (described collectively in this essay as ‘modern interiors’) play an important part in the contemporary world of cultural heritage and social sustainability. If these buildings are to take on lasting new roles that will make significant contributions to the lives of people who will visit or inhabit them, architects and interior designers, working with historians and other cultural heritage professionals, need to address the numerous subtle ways in which interiors have acquired, and continue to acquire, their multi-layered and constantly evolving definitions and meanings.

As they are also much more ephemeral than buildings, the restoration and conservation of historic interiors is often a more complex task requiring imagination and precise historical knowledge on the part of architects and designers.

This essay will address this complexity and its implications for today’s architects and interior designers working in the areas of restoration and conservation within the context of cultural heritage. It will suggest that they need to be acutely aware of the past actual and potential psychological and socio-cultural meanings of interior spaces and to understand the ways in which they are both communicated by designers and read by users.