Modern Interiors Research Centre
Identity and Habitation: Modern Interiors Research Centre
Kingston School of Art's Modern Interiors Research Centre is the world's leading research centre in its field. It is dedicated to the study of interiors and their contents from the mid 19th century to the present day. Research is historically focused and consideration is also given to contemporary practice and theory.
The Research Centre places its emphasis is on identity and habitation – the experience of being inside spaces. It explores the interior as an interface between architecture and designed objects. Research fields include design and architectural history; and visual, material, personal and spatial culture.
The Modern Interiors Research Centre is part of a large international network, staging conferences and events and engaging with international authorities and institutions. It works with, for example, partners as diverse as the V&A and the Geffrye Museum to the Universities of Melbourne and Oviedo.
Its influential publications have included Designing the Modern Interior (2010) and Biography, Identity and the Interior (2013). The Research Centre launched the academic journal Interiors: Design Architecture Culture in 2010.
The overarching aim of the Research Centre is to create a body of knowledge that will inform interior design knowledge worldwide.
Catharine Rossi, Space Electronic - Then and Now installation at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale (credit: Gilly Booth)
Modern Interior Research Centre MIRC 2021 Webinar: Interiors in the era of Covid-19
Wednesday, 24 March 2021: 10.30am–1.10pm and 2–5.10pm (GMT)
The Covid19 pandemic has caused people, worldwide, to be confined to their homes for extended periods of time. In addition to their traditional roles as places of refuge and nurturing, homes have had to accommodate the additional roles of schools, gymnasia, restaurants, cinemas, offices, making spaces and more. Above all, the home has been looked to as a site to support and enhance the well-being of its inhabitants in a variety of ways. Many of these new functions are tech-enabled. At the same time, the work and hospitality spaces in our city centre buildings sit empty.
MIRC's Webinar, Interiors in the era of Covid-19, reflects on the complex ways in which interiors have responded historically, and are responding, to Coronavirus and similar historical crises. Papers will address the multiple transformations that have taken place in interiors, both private and public, as a result of these and focus on how this has affected our perceptions of, and our relationships with, the interiors we inhabit.
For more information
Please contact Penny Sparke, Fiona Fisher or Patricia Lara-Betancourt.
