Introduction

Abstract

As academic subject matter, interiors permeate the curricula of multiple interrelated disciplines that together provide the educational foundation for an expanded range of creative and professional practices. Such interiors-oriented academic programs cut across fields like architecture, design, and art and are as diverse as the types of practices that shape contemporary interiors spatially and discursively. Any overall view of interiors education as such resists singularity, simplification, or standardization, benefiting instead from frameworks that embrace diversity, multivalence, and heterogeneity. The most innovative, influential, and effective pedagogies have the capacity not only to mirror practice, but also shape its future trajectories. This theme issue of Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture brings together a wide variety of exemplary pedagogical approaches that represent the latest innovations of interiors education. The call for contributions posed a series of questions for authors to consider in their method of teaching, which would then be reflected in the student work being produced. Significant questions such as what constitutes an entry into interiors education, and how does one define its intellectual and technical foundations? How does the space of the studio impact learning? What methods of instruction advance students’ spatial thinking? Which models of experiential learning are particularly impactful and effective? What constitutes interiors-based design research and how is it taught? In te rio rs D O I: 10 .1 08 0/ 20 41 91 12 .2 01 9. 15 91 75 4