At the In-Side of the Limit: Redefining the Architecture and Interior Design Relationship

In an effort to respond to a socially and ethically driven imperative to address world issues more holistically, this paper focuses on the relationship between architecture and interior design and how this might be redefined to accommodate increasing demands for multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. It is argued that working against this are conceptions of architecture and interior design that reflect an acceptance of the inside/outside binary in which each binary element is understood as being independent of, and for the most part, in opposition to the other. To establish a way of confronting the duality of the architecture/interior design binary and other associated binaries, research both from inside and outside the design disciplines is considered. The outcome is an appreciation of binary structures where the terms are understood as implicating each other through an interweaving relationship of folding. This is supported by an overarching ‘intercorporeality of existence’ which emphasises the fluidity of being and the integral and dynamic connection of body and world. Rather than deny the existence of a membrane or a disciplinary boundary, intercorporeality of existence regards the boundary as complicit in the process of mutual capture and of providing for a resonance which moves us to the in-side of the limit, a ‘groundless ground’ of new possibility.