Refiguring the Production of Interiors Through Feminist Philosophy and an Expanded Drawing Practice

Abstract

Whilst gender has been critical to the analysis and understanding of the consumption of lived, and often domestic, interiors – the analysis of a gendered practice, of production, has been much less considered. This thesis rethinks the production of the interior in relation to feminist philosophers Elizabeth Grosz, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, to corporeal feminism and New Materialist thinking. It asks: what alternative forms of practice are there to make interior space? And how do embodied practices such as drawing, writing, weaving and dance change the way interiors are produced and drawn in the process of production?
I contend that interior design is a discipline that is contained within the patriarchal structures of architecture, within its frameworks and representational modes. Even with the onset of new technologies, the structures and drawing methods within the discipline remain unchanged. As a student, a practising interior designer and an academic I have, somewhat frustratingly, repeatedly performed these gendered norms. Architectural drawing habits are inscribed in my bodily actions, words, processes, and aesthetic responses – they act performatively. The voices, actions, words, experiences, descriptions, sensations, materials of others, human and more- than-human are limited.
Through interdisciplinary conversations with practice based and materially engaged disciplines I refigure gendered habits sedimented within the practice of interior design. Improvisational drawing and dance practices that emerged in the United States and Europe in the late 1950s and 1960s and their successive performances are considered and used to create new weaves of practice regarding diversity within the discipline of interior design. I argue that an expanded form of drawing practice located in fine art and feminist philosophy opens out alternative ways to reconfigure the discipline of interior design and the way interiors are produced.
This is a practice research PhD that has been structured around a critical analysis and contextualisation of the developing methodology of four sequential bodies of artworks created since 2002. The critical reflection and analysis materialises in a final exhibition and presentation of new works with a supporting artist statement.

Date of Award	16 Sept 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Portsmouth
Supervisor	Oren Lieberman (Supervisor), Trevor William Keeble (Supervisor) & Alison Habens (Supervisor)