Re-Inventing the American Modern Interior: Visual Dissections and Retroactive Montages

Abstract

This visual essay is the outcome of a research trip through Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, an “on the road trip” designed to discover some of the most representative domestic and urban Modern American interiors. The focus of this work was an investigation of places, cities, and buildings, dealing with the experience of space in the first place but, most of all, aims to understand and develop architectural themes, design processes, compositional principles, and project strategies. The tool for this analysis is a montage (of photographs, images, documents, textures, materials) that, after dissections and distillations, expresses the character and the concept of the building.