The Story of the Interior

Why do we live the way we do? We spend our lives indoors--at home or at work, in stores and train stations, museums and restaurants--but how often do we stop to consider the ideas behind and the forms of the spaces around us? The Story of the Interior does just this, tracing how interiors have evolved and revealing how they influence the way we live, work, learn, and play.

Educator and design writer Graeme Brooker delves into the history of the room and the cultural, social, and technological factors that have given rise to spaces as diverse as nomadic dwellings, state-of-the-art airports, monumental temples, baroque palaces, high-rise apartments, and high fashion boutiques. The result is a dazzling global tour of interiors that points out the drastically different and surprisingly similar spaces we inhabit. A wealth of examples, both ancient and modern, iconic and offbeat, helps us understand how we shape our indoor environments and how they shape us.

Discover Jayne Mansfield's pink heart-adorned bathroom; the state bedroom of Louis XIV; the postmodern boxing ring in Karl Lagerfeld's Monaco apartment; Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Palace of Mirrors; and the dining room designed by Whistler that started a bitter feud.

Visit a floating tea room in Copenhagen; a bath with a view at a Shanghai hotel; the ancient bazaars and caravanserais of Türkiye; the VIP lounge at the Santiago International Airport; and a power plant turned into an extreme sports venue in South Africa.

Consider the surprising roots of familiar terms, such as the corridor (a place for running) and the boudoir (a place for sulking); what it is to build a "wall" whether Neolithic standing stones or Japanese paper shoji; the interior features we take for granted from stairs and windows to electric lighting and the revolving door.