October 15, 2024 Teston Publishes Book Detailing Public Interiority

A new book inspired by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s College of Architecture and Design’s Public Interiority symposium and exhibition, led by Associate Professor Liz Teston, has just been published, offering fresh insights into the intersection of interior spaces and public life.

The symposium, held in February 2023 inside UT’s Art and Architecture Building, welcomed practitioners and academics from around the region. The Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture hosted an exhibition intended to articulate phenomenological prospects related to contemporary interiorities.

The book, “Public Interiority: Exploring Interiors in the Public Realm,” written by Teston along with the event’s presenters, exhibitors and Teston’s editorial board members, describes five different ways public interiority could exist—atmosphere, politics, programs or usage of space, form, and psychologies.

Through eight chapters and 16 visual essays, Teston aims to expand the discipline of interior architecture beyond literal building interiors.

“Designers are experts at human-scale spatial designs and this book can shed light on the projects, histories, and theories of this approach,” she said. “It is critical to the progression of the interior architecture field and to contemporary culture that we explore settings where transient, user-generated conditions can play out in the urban realm. Increasing designer expertise in experiential public space enables us to establish frameworks for spatial rights, significance, and subjectivity.”

She knew a symposium would circulate the topic to the discipline and bringing people into the conversation and revealing this phenomenon of exterior interiors in public places. Teston presented and exhibited widely, including in Bucharest, Romania; Venice, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Berlin, Germany; and New York.

The book, published by Routledge, “reconsiders the limits of the interior and its perceived spaces, exploring the notion that interior conditions can exist within an exterior environment, and therefore challenging the very foundations of the interior architecture field.”

The college supported Teston’s research through the James Musgraves Research Award, the Hal and Alma Reagan Research Award, and Dean’s Symposium Fund.

Additional support for Teston’s research has come from the AIA NY Center for Architecture Arnold W. Brunner Grant and UT grants including the Office of Research Innovation and Economic Development’s Scholarly Projects Fund and Exhibit, Performance, and Publication Expense Fund and the Division of Access and Engagement’s mini-grant, and the Division of Student Success’s Departmental Research Assistant and Faculty Research Assistant Funds.

“Public Interiority” is available through open access, with support from the University of Tennessee’s Open Publishing Support Fund.