Zarya Vrabcheva Dissertation 2015

IN sideVISIBLE
CITIES
TRANSCENDING SUBSTANCE
TRANSCENDING SUBSTANCE
2014
Interior Design
Royal College of Art

Tutor: Barry Curtis
2015
Words: 12 397
ZARYA VRABCHEVA
Let everything that’s been planned come true.
Let them believe.
And let them have a laugh at their passions.
Because what they call passion actually is not some
emotional energy, but just the friction between their
souls and the outside world.
And most important, let them believe in themselves.
Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is
a great thing, and strength is nothing.
When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible.
When he dies, he is hard and insensitive.
When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant.
But when it’s dry and hard, it dies.
Hardness and strength are death’s companions.
Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness
of being.
Because what has hardened will never win. i

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 7
List of Illustrations 9
Prologue 15
Introduction 19
I. The Memory Palace 25
II. The Matter of Imagination 37
III. The Vigour of Illusion 49
i. Delusion 53
ii. Delight 59
Conclusion 71
Endnotes 74
Bibliography 76
6
I want to thank infinitely...
My tutor Barry Curtis for being immensely supportive

and offering guidance and boundless source of
knowledge for the past year
My Friends for being the ultimate distractions I needed
and
My Parents
for being
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
All illustrations aim to portray the complex relationship and symbiosis between living and nonliving
matter or expose the lack of such. Both nature’s presence and man-made moves on these visuals speak the
same language of empathy and affection of each other. Ambitious to reveal the unseen and sublime in the
details of everyday spaces and objects, these works of art from nature and man enhance on diverse levels
the awareness of the mysteries and complexities in spatial design. Their meanings transcend texture in that
they suggest hidden presences and hints to reveal the invisible.
Cover image - Drawing by Author
Transcending matter
An Island on the Pavement - Author’s image 2

Old Paint on Metal - Unknown 4
http://laxative-stock.deviantart.com/art/Old-paint-on-metal-04-8912959

Groot - Author’s image 6

Tarpaper - Tara Donovan 8
http://paperbones.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/tara-donovan-material-muse/

Frozen - Author’s Image 10

Vertical Emptiness - Yasuaki Onishi 12
http://www.procureddesign.com/tag/yasuaki-onishi/
9
Transcending containment
Tokyo Nights - Shinrya 14
https://geolocation.ws/v/W/File:Flickr%20-%20Shinrya%20-%20Tokyo%20Nights.jpg/-/en#
IKEA Augmented Reality Catalogue 17

http://www.johnmstephensdesign.com/ikea-augmented-reality-catalog/
Afrum (White)- James Turrell - photo by Florian Holzherr 18

http://artobserved.com/2013/08/los-angeles-james-turrell-at-lacma-through-april-6th-2014/
BODY XXIII, 2011 Carbon and casein on paper 23

http://www.antonygormley.com/drawing/item-view/id/206#p11
I. The Memory Palace - Transition and Fragility

The Thinking Hand 24
http://www.homeandmedical.co.uk/healthcareaid/
Mugla School - Author’s image 29
Mugla School Interior - Unknown 29

http://webstage.bg/izchezvashtata-balgariya/
School Walls - Ivan Dokov 29

http://ivandokov.com/School-walls
Chauvet Cave Drawings - 30 000 BC 30

http://maurathismaurathat.blogspot.jp/2011/12/cave-of-forgotten-dreams-chauvet-cave.html

Baitogogo - Henrique Oliveira 31
http://blog.artintern.net/article/383455
Abandoned Baths in Sofia, Bulgaria 31

http://zdravkoyonchev.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/
Unframed Ellis Island - JR Artist 32

http://www.saveellisisland.org/gallery/unframed-ellis-island-by-jr-photo-gallery/
Casablanca - Georges Rousse 32

http://designdautore.blogspot.jp/2013/12/georges-rousse-art.html

Soul Kitchen Cafe - Florence 34
http://www.soulkitchenfirenze.it/
Leopolda Station 34
http://www.locationmatrimonio.it/stazione_leopolda.html
Felipe Oliveira Baptista at MUDE / Bureau Betak 34
http://londondesignjournal.com/home/2013/11/21/

Convent de Sant Fransesc - David Closes 35
http://www.archdaily.com/251389/convent-de-sant-francesc-david-closes/
The Factory - Ricardo Boffill 35

http://www.archdaily.com/294077/the-factory-ricardo-bofill/
II. The Matter of Imagination - Transition and Void

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel - Peter Zumthor 36
http://blog.livedoor.jp/mild_mint/archives/51594435.html 11
Japanese Room 39
http://www.narutopod.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15212
Mela Dream House - La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela 40

http://www.ideologic.org/news/view/
The Ago - Henry Moore - photo by John Meadows 41

https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmeadows/6981956089/sizes/l
Ghost - Rachel Whiteread 42

http://www.heyshow.com/tipsdetail.asp?id=857

Aesthetics of Air - Malte Wagenfeld 42
http://www.urbaninterior.net/index.php?action=individuals&option=14
A Retrospective - James Turrell 43

http://joshfassbind.com/blog/james-turrell-lacma/
Orchard Park series - Andy Lock 43

http://jb-passages.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/memory-mirrors.html

The Therme Vals - Peter Zumthor 45
http://www.therme-vals.ch/en
Sensing Spaces - Grafton Architects 46

https://www.flickr.com/photos/barbarachandler/12576532563/

Sensing Spaces - Kengo Kuma 46
http://thinkingcity.org/2014/01/24/sensing-spaces/

Vertical Village - Author’s image 47
12
III. Transition and Reality
Weather project - Olafur Eliasson 48
http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=1408983
Forget Your Past - Nikola Mihov 52

http://www.emlii.com/19840072/
Socialist Panel Blocks in Sofia 55

http://www.taringa.net/posts/imagenes/17984388/
Socialist Panel Blocks Facade in Sofia 55

http://www.bulgarianproperties.bg/imoti-tristayni-apartamenti/
Eclectic Interior in a socialist block- Author’s image 55
Humanising - A Dolls Impossible Body 57

http://inhabitat.com/
Augmented Reality - A still from The Golden Age by Factory Fifteen 57

http://vimeo.com/25678978
Untitled - Tara Donovan 58

http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/111/tara-donovan
Blind Light - Antony Gormley 61

http://complexitys.com/english/art-en/making-space/
Feelings are fact - Olafur Eliasson & Ma Yansong 61

http://ahela.wordpress.com/tag/olafur-eliasson/
The Victory - Rene Magritte 63 13

http://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-victory-1939
Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits - Giorgio De Chirico 63

http://artchive.com/artchive/d/de_chirico/biscuits.jpg.html
Riverbed - Olafur Eliasson 64

http://olafureliasson.net/archive/exhibition/EXH102282/olafur-eliasson-riverbed
Imponderabilia - Marina Abramovic & Ulay 64

http://scrapaduq.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/presence-stillness/imponderabilia1977/
Geometric rooms - Esther Stocker 67

http://robinverdegaal.nl/2012/03/28/esther-stocker/
20:50 - Richard Wilson 67

http://blog.theartpole.com/theartwork2050/
Paper Cups - Tara Donovan 68

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB123004939144230191#4
BanQ - Office dA 68
http://www.archdaily.com/42581/banq-office-da/
A Journey Between Land and Sea, Naples’ Underground - Oscar Tusquets 69

http://informationfarm.blogspot.jp/2012/11/naples-subway-art.html
NYU Department of Philosophy - Steven Holl 69

http://www.houzr.com/top-10-brilliant-staircase-designs-ideas/

Capacitor - Antony Gormley 70
http://complexitys.com/english/art-en/making-space/#.VC1Y__ldWPU
Prologue
15
“We are fragmented into so many

spaces. We don’t know who we really
are, or what aspects of ourselves
we should identify with or believe
in. So many contradictory voices
dictate, and feelings fight for control
over our inner lives that we find
ourselves scattered everywhere, in all
directions, leaving nobody home.“
Sogyal Rinpoche ii
W
e inhabit a world of rapid change. Advancements and technology continuously
reconstruct our surroundings and behaviour, thus challenging our essential connection
with the natural environment and the bond between each other. Our perceptions of the
world are eminently altered from before: our senses are digitally stimulated, communications are virtual
and even our own thoughts and ideas increasingly come from or end up on a machine screen. More
customary forms or engagement are discouraged and our own creations risk to become a barrier between
ourselves and our primal habitat. As a result, societies can become divided and their citizens can become
deprived of essential modes of human experience.
Among other aspects of current culture, architecture has also changed extensively. Many of its
traditional priorities devoted to enriching the way people live are challenged. In order to remedy these
forms of alienation, we need to look deeper into what defines us human, what sort of lives we want to live
and what sort of spaces would protect and enrich those lives. Spaces are powerful tools in provoking and
altering the human mind, stimulating its curiosity, desires and solutions by way of visible and ambient
matter. We have been dependant and attached to our man-made environment much more than to our
natural one and we should be able to reconcile and identify with it. Interior design, as one of the most
sincere and sensual forms of architecture is our most intimate connection with the built environment. In
its essence, it should continuously enrich everyday life with diverse experiences and emotions, raising our
awareness of space, time and matter in which we all coexist.
16
The overwhelming character of urban life and its eclectic, sometimes even overabundant materiality
have deprived us of the ability to understand our surroundings through sensual stimulation and feeling
the architecture in its totality - through the invisible. The expansion of technology in every aspect of our
daily lives rearranges our world so that we don’t have to experience it anymore. The ability to get lost and
question is replaced by instantly delivered- on-a-plate guides and answers. The fundamental human trait
of curiosity is challenged by overwhelming realism. Imagination and fantasy are experienced virtually and
induced to us rather than produced by us. American architect Henry Lagorio describes our society as
one of instant images, where “lives are tailored by the ones we absorb” 1. On the same note, Italian writer
Italo Calvino argues that “an unending rainfall of images flattens our world of imagination as there is no
space left for it to emerge when everything imaginable is already there” 2. Overabundance in choice and
spectacle in our cities creates a vicious loop where experience is taken for granted and ingenuity is lost. We
become so guided by logic and reason that we lose the sense of surprise by a miracle. Are we approaching
to a moment of our existence beyond which technology and science cease our ability to be amazed by the
world and hence in love with life?
In a recent talk at the Royal College of Art 3, Marcus Fairs, chief editor at Dezeen, presented an
encompassing range of technologies, mostly such that transform the way we perceive the world as a
1. Henry J. Lagorio. Imagery and Illusionism in Architecture. (Padova: La Garangola, 1967. Print.) p. 23
2. Italo Calvino quoted in: Juhani Pallasmaa. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chiches-
ter: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print. p 133
3. Fairs, Marcus. Talking Interiors. 23 Jan. 2014. Lecture.
whole. The concept of augmented reality is entering our everyday lives progressively and its parameters
expand from simple shopping, where one could visualise the products on themselves or their homes, to
creating new realities that completely immerse the observer in an illusional setting. As much as I was
incredibly fascinated by how exponentially technology is developing, I found the idea of virtual experience
quite alienating from our human essence, even disturbing. It made me wonder, if technology is capable to
record, visualise and guide us in our daily activities in an increasingly more perfect and efficient manner,
would that mean that beyond a certain point, our capacities of memory, imagination and curiosity would
surrender to the “ingenuity” of the machine?
17

IKEA Augmented Reality Catalogue
Insidevisible - invisible but visible from the inside, the cities we live in, the spaces we occupy, the
void we exist in. The name of this paper is inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel “Invisible Cities”, where the
reader is immersed in fantasy worlds, which he or she is triggered to experience rather than understand.
I aspire to approach this journey in a similar way: by exploring, discovering and revealing the cities visible
from the inside, from architecture’s core - the interior. I have not sought to guide the reader along a
structured path but would like to provide them with an opportunity to progress in a branching and
meditative state of mind that illustrates my personal as well as other artists’ and designers` empathetic
conversations with space. These relations render vivid the complexities and mysteries of our surrounding
and our symbiosis with and within it.
I aspire to challenge the common notion of the interior as a site of containment and our conventional
relationship with objects in favour of an interior as a space of transition in which both the human and
the architecture body transcend from one state to another through mutual interaction. The language that
we speak with our spaces is not one easy to communicate in writing. It is lived rather than understood.
Many anxieties have haunted me while attempting to articulate these relationships and sculpt in words the
interior of betweeness. These conditions will gradually progress from the physical, seen and understood
to the immaterial, sublime and unfamiliar, thus stepping beyond sensory experience and encouraging the
disclosure of the hidden, sublime and extraordinary moments in our everyday lives.
18
Introduction
19
“We are not moving towards some

kind of goal, we are at the goal and
it is changing with us. If art has some
kind of goal it is to open our eyes to
that fact.“
John Cage iii

I
nterior design has very often been regarded as inferior to architecture rather than a complementary
and inseparable part of it. This common premise undoubtedly stems from the notion that interior
design is a space of containment - simultaneously contained by the architecture shell and
containing in itself foreign objects. If we accept both assertions to be true, interior design then remains
nothing but the void in-between. Void, however, is not emptiness but rather a space of betweeness that
transcends the substance around it. This b e t w e e n e s s , brightly described by architecture theorist
Dr Cathy Smith as “the movement or passage from one existence to another” 1, is the o s c u l a n t iv
medium which glues all matter together, transmitting its projections. The e p h e m e r a l qualities of
the interior as a space of t r a n s i t i o n and m e t a m o r p h o s i s are the ones that truly reflect the
nature of our being and interaction with our surroundings. Smith portrays the interior:
…as envelope, which permits the passage from one space and
position to another, rather than the containment of objects and
functions in which each thing finds its rightful place. Building
would not function as finished object but rather as spatial process,
open to whatever use it may be put to in an indeterminate future,
not as a container of solids but as a facilitator of flows: ‘volume
without contour‘ 2
20 Indeed, immaterial architecture represents the empathetic union between the human and the
architecture body. Subject of continuous alterations, the interior space is affected by other bodies, nature
and phenomena it comes across, but also, affecting them in return. This symbiosis, both physically present
and invisible to the eye, can be experienced by the mind as projections of emotion, character and action
from the human to the space and the reverse in which the space would project its qualities onto the human
mind. Thus the connection between human beings and space is no longer a one-direction monologue but
rather can be illustrated as an on-going conversation between the designer, all users and the building. Each
one of these bodies acts as an active participant in the complex relationship between living and nonliving
matter bounded by time and space. The visitor performs as much as the designer in the spatial experience
through his or her ability to open up all stimuli and mind to perceive living space as living organism. I will
try to clarify my intensions by trusting some endorsed philosophical terms:
P h e n o m e n o l o g y emerged at the beginning of the 20th century as a movement appraising

the essence of consciousness and deep understanding of being. 3 It opposed structures dependant on
rationalization, function and visual dominance in favour of sensually stimulating architecture that allows
subjective and idiosyncratic experience of space. 4 As one of its most prominent followers, the Finnish
architect Juhani Pallasmaa v contends that contemporary architecture turns away from social reality and
1. Cathy Smith. “Inside-out: Speculating on the Interior.” IDEA (2004): 93-102.QUT EPrints. Brisbane: Queensland University
of Technology, 2004. Web. 10 Sept. 2.014. Web
2. Ibid.
3. “Quick Tour through Phenomenological Thinking in Architecture.” ABIBOO. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Sept. 2014. Web.
4. Ibid.
becomes self-referential and self-motivated. 5 He argues that narcissism and self-indulgence in architecture
should be replaced by empathy and social conscience. 6 Moreover, his views imply that “instead of novelty,
momentariness and speed, architecture must acknowledge and respond to the archaic, bio - cultural
dimensions of the human psyche and achieve this by slowing down and allowing our experience of reality
to grasp and understand change” 7. Recently, another intriguing branch of this term has emerged under the
name of Alien Phenomenology. In Ian Bogost’s book by the same name, the author portrays the wonders
of the everyday and the mystery around objects that surround us, arguing that every material thing should
be considered at the same level of existence as human beings. 8 And while we have been busy speculating
on alien life, we do not realize that we are surrounded by aliens all the time - the lamp that makes us see,
the chair that gives us comfort, the pillow we embrace, that pair of keys that never seems to be at the right
place, to recall few of many.
E m p a t h y is a term commonly used to describe the ability to feel and experience someone else’s
emotions and mental state. Although less familiar, empathy also depicts our capacity to feel and experience
objects and inanimate matter. The word was coined first by the German philosopher Robert Visher in 1872,
who described it as a feeling rather than a reason-lead process. 9 After observing that humans are aroused
by abstract phenomena such as storms, sunsets, trees, he assumed that we may empathize with objects
such as walls, doorways, chairs by projecting our personal emotions into them. 10 Thus, the feelings of the
artist or designer while creating his or her work become part of its content. Visher, brought the concept of
empathy in the English language from his German colleague – the psychologist and philosopher Theodor 21
Lipps. 11 Considered the father of the first scientific theory of Einfühlung (from German “feeling into”),
Lipps argued that the complex transference of one’s ego into objects results in the unification of the two. 12
The ego, he believed, penetrates the object so that its form is filled out by the observer’s emotions. 13 The
philosopher also explained optical illusions with empathy, arguing that judgement is formed on the basis of
former personal experiences and it may cause us to see activity of “force” and “tendency” (counterforce) in
geometrical forms by projecting “living” activity into them. 14 Another psychologist Heinrich Wolfflin went
beyond the theories of Lipps and suggested in 1886 that objects can possess a life of their own and that
matter must be overcome in order for their self-determination to be realised. 15 The unconscious process of
Einfühlung, according to Wolfflin, entails a fusion between the observer and the object based on “natural
instinct” and on “inner imitation”. 16 The concept of Einfühlung during the 19th century offered a new way
5. Pallasmaa, Juhani, and Peter B. MacKeith. Encounters: Architectural Essays. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy, 2005.
Print. p.301
6. Juhani Pallasmaa and Peter B. MacKeith. Encounters: Architectural Essays. Helsinki, Finland: Rakennustieto Oy, 2005. Print.
p.301
7. Ibid. p.301
8. Ian Bogost. Alien Phenomenology, Or, What It’s like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2012. Print.
9. Kent C. Bloomer and Charles Willard Moore. Body, Memory, and Architecture. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1977. Print.) p.27
10. Ibid. p.27
11. C. Montag, J. Gallinat, and A. Heinz. “Theodor Lipps and the Concept of Empathy: 1851-1914. “ (American Journal of
Psychiatry 165.10(2008): 1261. Web.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Edward Bradford Titchener. A Text-book of Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Internet Archive. Web.
15. Heinrich Wolfflin. Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture. (Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Architecture, M.I.T., 1976.
Print.) p. 160
16. Ibid. p. 160
of understanding the relationship between nature, art and architecture and proved to have a dominant
role in 19th century German aesthetics. Lipps characterized empathy as “the objective enjoyment of self”,
where positive empathy (beauty) is where the self encounters him or herself in the object and negative
(ugliness) where he or she is repelled by it. 17 I have to admit that the idea of having relationships with our
surroundings has haunted me for a while and although never associating it with the theory of empathy
until now, I have always regarded inanimate matter as having a life of its own. Indeed, in the next few
chapters I would like to re - conceptualise the interior as a transitional condition, a state of becoming in
constant metamorphosis, which responds to and reflects our lives.
The journey of the dissertation undergoes three states of empathy – through memory, imagination
and illusion. In the first state, the building and the human will simultaneously share emotions through
M E M O R Y and reflect each other’s ability to encapsulate presence, activity and emotion through
time. Both the interior and the human are subjects of the processes of aging and metamorphosis and
their ephemeral and fragile qualities enhance and visualise the constantly evolving nature of their beings.
Memory, imprinted on the shells of human and architecture bodies allows understanding and penetration
to their inner, hidden selves.
The next stage will take the reader gradually to the abstract and immaterial world through our
capacity of I M A G I N A T I O N. Here, the ability of the human to dream and inject a space with his
22 own characteristics plays a vital role in shaping our environment. This state goes beyond the senses and the
physically present matter to re-arrange the world as we know it and to project a piece of ourselves onto it.
As a counter force, I L L U S I O N will demonstrate its vigour in forming a relationship with

the human being with the ability to project its character onto the mind. This powerful tool in design will
undergo two states - negative and positive - to intensify how it can alter perceptions and control the human
mind both injecting them with fear and delusion but also gratifying them with enlightenment and delight.
The intention of this dissertation is to transcend the visible, deconstruct matter and find its most
secluded qualities of communicating its character to us and our ability to do the reverse. The three phases
aim to speculate on our conventional notion of interior design and surpass the rationalities and materiality
it is commonly related to. The interior, I aspire to illustrate through various situations and spaces, stimulates
curiosity in our being and reveals the qualities of a space as a living organism - growing, living, talking,
aging, never stopping and eventually dying...
17. Heinrich Wolfflin. Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture. (Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Architecture, M.I.T., 1976.
Print.) p. 160
23
BODY XXIII - Antony Gormley

I.
The Memory
Palace
TRANSITION AND FRAGILITY 25
“Memory has its own special kind. It

selects, eliminates,alters, exaggerates,
minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies
also; but in the end it creates its
own reality, its heterogeneous but
usually coherent version of events;
and no sane human being ever trusts
someone else’s version more than his
own.“
Salman Rushdie vi
memory n.
{`mɛm(ə)ri}
I. Senses relating to the action or process of commemorating,

recollecting, or remembering.
II. d. The capacity of a body or substance for manifesting effects
of, or exhibiting behaviour dependent on, its previous state,
behaviour, or treatment; such effects; a state manifesting this
capacity. 1
I
n a world of nomadic individualism, belonging to a place, a feeling deeply rooted in previous
generations, is gradually fading away. Making our own homes in the world has become more of a
temporary process, in which we constantly add and subtract from the spaces we inhabit. Bringing
our most valuable belongings and memory stimulating objects with us on every new terrain, we aspire to
create a relationship with the new space that is less uncanny and more reminiscing of our past. Memories
are what we consist of and interiors carry the traces of our encounters and actions to remind us of who we
are, where we are from and who we have been with. The term memory palaces derives from ancient Rome
where it has been used to describe constellations of reminders attached to specific places and frequently
utilized to make fast associations during speeches. 2 The interior is indeed a memory palace, a space which
one can relate to and project oneself or as Edward Hollis portrays it “a museum of the soul, an archive of
26 its experiences” 3. People identify themselves with the spaces they have inhabited and the inability to do so
may result in losing one’s sense of self. English writer Kent Bloomer depicts:
One of the most hazardous consequences of suppressing

bodily experiences and themes in adult life may be a diminished
ability to remember who and what we are. The expansion of our
actual identity requires greater recognition of our sense of internal
space as well as of the space around our bodies. Certainly if we
continue to focus radically on external and novel experiences and
on the sights and sounds delivered to us from the environment to
the exclusion of renewing and expanding our primordial haptic
experiences, we risk diminishing our access to a wealth of sensual
detail developed within ourselves – our feelings of rhythm, of hard
and soft edges, of huge and tiny elements, of openings and closures,
and a myriad of landmarks and directions which, if taken together,
form the core of our human identity. 4
1. “Memory.” Def. 1. Oxford English Dictionary. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2014. Web. 23 Aug. 2014.Web.
2. Edward Hollis. The Memory Place: A Book of Lost Interiors. (London: Portobello, 2013. Print.) p.6
3. Ibid. p. 6
4. Kent Bloomer and Charles Willard Moore. Body, Memory, and Architecture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977. Print. p. 44
Empathy through memory is a constant narrative that the mind, the body and the building create
simultaneously and re-tell to each other. The mind carries its collection of associations, and through the
body and its stimuli it adds or modifies them continuously, reflecting the environment, objects and other
beings it comes across. Forming a positive or negative emotional union with spaces and external objects
fosters a subjective experience of our surroundings. Both the interior and the human being have the ability
to evolve and transform through one another. As Gabriel Marcel claims “I am my body”, Wallace Stevens
argues “I am what is around me” and finally Ludwig Wittgenstein intensifies “I am my world”. 5 Indeed, as
we live in time and time lives in us, we also dwell in spaces and they, in return, dwell in us. Similarly to the
action of time on the human body, the action of time on the architecture body results in processes of aging
through erosion and decomposition. Time, however, adds more to the body than it takes away. It enhances
the content and reflects its very existence through evidence of contact with other bodies marked on its skin
and soul. The feeling of human or nature’s presence in space provokes a warm sense of nostalgia, through
warn out and wrought features, which modern and shiny spaces lack...
It was the summer of 2000 when I first entered the beautiful valley of the Rhodopi village Mugla. vii
Me and my parents had just arrived after our seven-hour trekking from another mountain village on a hot
August day. We were warmly welcomed by a woman in her mid-forties and invited to stay overnight in the
local school, which had been partially adopted as a guest house and could even be seen as a holiday retreat,
tenderly occupying the highest hill in the area, surrounded by greenery and steep slopes. At the age of
ten, born and raised in the capital city of Sofia, I had grown with the perception that villages are these 27
wonderful escapes for kids like me to visit their grandparents’ house, for a week or two, but no more...After
that period, even as a child I was drawn back to the city and any beautiful setting would lose the battle
against the variety and conveniences of urban life. Mugla had its own church and a small mosque no more
than 100 meters away from one another. The “piazza” was framed by a couple of shops and a post office,
while the pubs, which exceeded the number of food stores, were scattered around in different corners of
the village, sometimes even hosted in some family’s backyard. I had visited many of these kind of places
during my childhood and while I was always craving to go back and play with my friends in the city, I was
finding something mysteriously beautiful and peaceful in there and wished to go back every year again and
again…
A bit less than thirteen years later, when this encounter had become a sweet but clouded memory,
I and a couple of friends from home took on a trip to the same region. I was particularly looking forward
to go back to the village of Mugla as it had left a certain note of melancholy in my mind. As I was filling my
friends with stories of the people I saw there and their serene but also vivid routines, we were approaching
the picturesque landscape of the valley… Ruins, remains of old furniture, abandoned houses, looking like
they are taking their last breaths before another slab decays and leads the whole structure into total
decomposition. This was the scene that welcomed us into what was once the living village - forgotten and
5. Quoted in: Juhani Pallasmaa. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: John
Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print. p. 13
overwhelmed by the forces of nature, nevertheless no less sincere and warm as it once was. The only shop
left in the village was enliven by half the population of the area – around ten men and women above the
age of seventy , sitting in the front patio and enjoying their afternoon tea or Rakia viii. After the old lady told
us that there was no ice-cream, because there are no young people to buy any, it really hit me – the place
from my memories was slowly approaching its final stages of extinction. ix
Interiors are lost all the time - the way interiors are lost tells us as
much more about them as the ways in which they were created or
inhabited 6
The two encounters with the same place in a span of thirteen years intensified my vision in seeing
the life of a building from its most active existence to its most quiet stage of becoming again one with nature.
This scenery portrays how not just interiors appear and disappear all the time. Here, this temporality
is expressed through the building, the whole architecture of a village, its streets, its people - gradually
disappearing but leaving the palaces of their presence behind. Even though I did not see it as a school, when
I first entered the building to stay overnight with my family, I could feel the once loud corridors, filled with
reflections and refractions of sounds from children’s footsteps and laughter. The walls were covered with
drawings of students and the shelves were still full of books and toys, serving once as primary guides and
first understandings of the world to the young students. More than a decade later, completely abandoned,
I experienced the building as a strata of numerous phases it had been through and the variety of guests it
28 had welcomed. Enveloped in sinister beauty, the school seemed like it still had a life of its own, no longer
interacting with human beings but solely with nature and its forces that gently subtracted from its physical
presence, but nevertheless adding more value to its spiritual being.
When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a

mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that
there is no room for its own nature. Timeless beauty “cannot be
made, but only generated indirectly, by the ordinary actions of
the people, just as a flower cannot be made; only generated from
a seed. 7
In a way, being inside a building is being inside a body, experiencing its soul. My soul is dispersed
around in many different places and interiors I have occupied in the last 5 years. Although none of them
truly became a place I call home, I had left a piece of me in them and they had left their mark on me in
return. Spread everywhere in my urge to discover more and more in this world, I have been leaving friends,
family and belongings behind but always keeping them with me through my memory palaces. To portray
through the words of William Carlos Paterson: “a man in himself is a city, beginning, seeking, achieving, and
concluding his life in ways, which the various aspects of a city may embody” 8. The need to share emotions,
experiences and to record the presence of our being has been a human trait since our very evolving as
6. Edward Hollis. The Memory Place: A Book of Lost Interiors. (London: Portobello, 2013. Print.) p.10
7. Ibid. p.10
8. William Carlos Paterson quoted in: Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phe-
nomenology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print. p. 30
29
Mugla School Exterior
Mugla School Interior Children’s Writing on Walls

human beings. Today our memories are subjects of recording devices and our minds become more and
more dependant on them. If we loosed data, pictures or even our social media account for an hour, we
feel anxious and empty because our memory palaces are deserted. Technology utilises the way we store
information, however, it also takes away our experience of it and the curiosity of discovering and identifying
characters of those who imprinted traces and hidden messages in our surroundings.
Chauvet Cave Drawings - 30 000 BC
30 Steven Holl believes that natural materials preserve the plasticity of a building and preserve our
experience of space. 9 Undeniably, natural textures, colours, patterns and smells convey the true essence of
materiality and respond to the natural course of life - reproducing, aging, breathing, dying. The tendency
to build in artificial and plastic materials to compete the continuum of time with longevity deprives
interior spaces of character and opposes their genuine character of being provisional. The symbiosis
between architecture and nature has been reflected in many artist’s works. Henrique Oliveira’s immensely
complicated sculpture represents the building and nature coming together to convey the strong union
existing between the two bodies, moreover acting as a metaphor of nature’s dominance and intervention
over the man-made architecture. Many other real examples of abandoned places, such as the Thermal
Baths in Sofia, illustrate nature’s prevailing force, gracefully invading and beautifully decorating the spaces
that no longer host human presences. As if it dreams to substitute them.
Other artists such as JR Artist have chosen to visualise the layers of the interior in different periods
of time. In his project Ellis Island, he graphically re-builds surfaces of different abandoned interiors, which
have served as shelters for many immigrants in the late 19th century. As a visual essay, he reveals human
silhouettes, forgotten in time, throught the skin of the architecture, thus animating it with life. In a different
manner Georges Rousse brings together past and present by emphasizing the contrast between the two in
perfectly outlined three dimensional collages. His photography relies on a precise angle, which frames the
9. Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. San
Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print. p. 31
illusion that a new space lives, completely untouched from its past in a secure and unbreakable shell.
Baitogogo - Henrique Oliveira

31
Abandoned Thermal Baths in Sofia, Bulgaria - Zdravko Yonchev

Unframed, Ellis Island Hospital - JR Artist
32
Casablanca - Georges Rousse

the illusion that a new space lives in a secure and unbreakable shell, completely untouched from its past
and its context.
Strangely we are attached more to our man-made scenario, nevertheless we associate the ideal
with maintaining contact with our natural one. Nature portrays the divine, the spiritual, while the city is an
imagery of the chaos and the evil. However, this concept is somehow forsaken to fiction and poetry and the
ideal of innocence and harmony is perpetually lost to the ideal of the hard, solid and rigid in our modern
living. Society gives priority to those that are loud and secure and diminishing the introvert and fragile. The
same is true of architecture. Transitional and fragile are considered inferior to gigantic, robust structures,
but it is them, that truly reflect the nature and ephemerality of our living. Architecture, according to Steven
Holl, is “the art of petrified silence” and should “detach us from the present and allow us to experience the
slow, firm flow of time and tradition”10. Interior design is temporary, it does not compete with architecture
to remain untouched in history. It, however, builds up on layers of history and each alteration is a re-telling
of a story of the building and its occupants as it existed in a particular time. The interior is a constantly
changing response to people’s needs and lives that justifies the building’s presence. I was lucky to live and
practice interior design in Florence for almost 3 years, which gave me the opportunity to observe the
changing of the city from the inside in a frozen by time exterior shell. Interiors exist in the continuum of
time, undertaking different states of transition, to become collages, meeting points of architecture and
design, of people and objects, of past and present and of living and dead.
The city would be anything but still. In the process of its perpetual
33
and simultaneous construction and decay, buildings would
appear and disappear: they would be built on top of one another,
out of one another, or inside one another. 11
Increasingly more attention has been put to preserving the memory of old buildings when they
need to be adapted with new functions. Re-novation is substituted with re-generation, through which
the designer injects new life into the old structure by enchanting its value and memories throughout the
space, instead of locking it in frame or behind glass. Spanish architect David Closes transforms an ex-
convent in the Catalan town of Santpedor to a cultural centre. His intervention does not aim to hide any
traces or scars of the old, almost falling apart monastery at the time. He contrasts the new design with the
beauty of the remains and highlights visible the wounds and signs of missing elements and presences in
the building. Similarly his colleague Ricardo Boffill re-imagines a disused cement factory into a beautiful
home-studio, again leaving the marks and magic of the old place float freely around the new one. Empathy
through memory creates a simultaneous union between the space and the human, where one can identify
its character, leave a mark on it and eventually become part of it. All of the presented works of fine art and
design are prominent examples of spaces that can guide us through the threshold of being and reveal the
connection to our cultural and biological past. A person is a collection of spaces and memory palaces, what
he or she will become depends on the imagination and even more so on the illusion.
11. Edward Hollis. The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories. London:
Portobello, 2009. Print. p. 5
Cafe Soul Kitchen, Florence Leopolda Station during an event, Florence
34
Felipe Oliveira Baptista at MUDE - Bureau Betak

35
Convent de Sant Fransesc - David Closes
The Factory - Ricardo Boffill

II.
The Matter of
Imagination
TRANSITION AND VOID 37
“Feeling does not have to justify

itself; in matters of beauty, reason
should surrender its overextended
authority to the imagination.“
David Hume x
imagination n.
{ᵻˌmadʒᵻˈneɪʃn}
I. a. The power or capacity to form internal images or ideas

of objects and situations not actually present to the senses,
including remembered objects and situations, and those
constructed by mentally combining or projecting images of
previously experienced qualities, objects, and situations. Also
(esp. in modern philosophy): the power or capacity by which the
mind integrates sensory data in the process of perception
b. An inner image or idea of an object or objects not actually
present to the senses; often with the implication that the idea
does not correspond to the reality of things. 1
T
he question of what substance is was raised as early as 340 BC by the Greek philosopher
Aristotle, who claimed there is a unique single substance that interconnects all activity,
matter and motion. 2 His work “Metaphysics” xi proved to have an important role in the history of
philosophy, as well as in the evolution of art and architecture. Metaphysical today is described as “enquiry
that raises questions about reality that lie beyond or behind those capable of being tacked by the methods
of science” 3. With the premise that architecture and design are substantial matter that makes us question
and wonder about our reality, the metaphysical becomes indispensable part of the spatial experience.
Perceiving what is not physically there can take the form of imagination, when the human mind projects its
38
thoughts onto the architectural body or illusion, when space itself has the power to change the awareness
and perception of the human mind. The next two chapters will look at these two phenomena and their
vital role in forming an empathy relationship between the biological bodies and the architecture ones.
Imagination is a nonseparable part of the concept of empathy and renders vividly the ability of the mind
to visualise and experience the sublime and extraordinary in the everyday and ordinary.
Rather than considering the betweeness as void and emptiness, I would like to illustrate it as
an invisible substance that glues matter, simultaneously keeping it apart and holding it together. Italo
Calvino describes beautifully this union in his imaginary city of Raissa, “city of sadness”, where “there runs
an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched
again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy
city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence” 4. In his dream world novel, Calvino implies that
at any given moment, there is more than one reality which we can experience through imagination. If we
look at the world as more similar to the realm of dreams than to a scientific doctrine, we might experience
existential and lived space rather than physical and geometric. Interior design could be more liberated like
fine art, provoking our thoughts and imagination or like stage design, constantly altering with the change
of the acts we play.
1. “Imagination” Def. 1. Oxford English Dictionary. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2014. Web. 23 Aug. 2014.Web.
2. S. Marc Cohen. “Aristotle’s Metaphysics.” Stanford University. Stanford University, 08 Oct. 2000. Web. 01 Oct. 2014. Web.
3. Simon Blackburn. “Metaphysical.” The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.
4. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Print.
Ma is a Japanese concept, best described as “gap”, “the space between two structural parts” 5. Ma
is not created by compositional elements but takes place in the imagination of the viewer and “builds up
on the assumption that absence, not presence renders homage” 6. Marshall McLuhan describes Ma as “the
complex network of relationships between people and objects” 7. “Ma is a consciousness of place, not in
the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and
non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.” 8 Therefore Ma can be defined as “experiential place
understood with emphasis on interval” 9. This concept is superbly illustrated in Japanese architecture,
where beauty and serenity rely solely upon the varieties of light and shadow, hitting still surfaces.

39
Japanese Room
The Italian architect Pier Vittorio Aureli denotes on the subject of the invisible by challenging our
English definition of form with that of Greek:
The Latin “forma” stands for two Greek words with quite
different meanings: eidos, or abstract form, and morphe,
or visible form. In its very origin the word form seems to
contain the dispute between those who give priority to the
visibility of things as a fundamental datum of experience and
those who give priority to the inner structure of experience
itself as the factor that determines how visible things are. 10
Similarly to his Italian colleague, the English architect Jonathan Hill has confronted himself with the hard
5. “A Note for MA.” Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-Ji - Iimura. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
6. “Ma (negative Space).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 08 Nov. 2014. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
7. Marshall McLuhan. Theoretical elaboration. Volume 2, Taylor & Francis 2005. p 157
8. “Ma (negative Space).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 08 Nov. 2014. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
9. Ibid.
10. Pier Vittorio Aureli. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2011. Print.
task of describing immaterial architecture. Nevertheless he effectively portrays this concept “as the perceived
absence of matter rather than the actual absence of matter” 11. He exemplifies this theory with sound, as a
medium, which although immaterial because it can’t be seen, is evident in space through its consequences
when creating vibrations on a surface or echo in an empty room. 12 Sound, he implies, has materiality, in
that it can be heard. “Silence is immaterial visually and aurally. But, through absence, it focuses increased
attention on the senses and materials present. Absence of material is not the same as absence of meaning”13.
Sound is somehow a forgotten tool in design and when one encounters a beautifully orchestrated space,
one reminds themselves of the power it has to construct almost like another landscape in the existing. In
La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s work Dream House, sounds are played according to the movement
of the bodies in space at diverse range of frequencies, completely infecting the visitors and sculpting an
acoustic intimacy that builds up the interior in the mind. 14 These synthesized frequencies in addition to
the dense magenta colour and shadows created by the presences of people enhance a continuos visual and
acoustic transformation of the space as if it is talking to the visitor, singing, or possibly screaming.
40
Dream House - La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela

Many other artists and designers have been attempting to visualise negative space, Ma, in order to
find the mysteries behind the invisible. Henry Moore is one of the most prominent sculptors to be able to
animate emptiness with life. 15 He allows empty space to form an essential partnership with the solid, thus
exaggerating the union between positive and negative, solid and invisible, where the void is the osculant
union. 16 In a similar way, the interior softens the existential boundary between man and architecture,
creating a fusion between the individual and the world. Designer Malte Wagenfeld illustrates the gracious
flow of air in his installation “Aesthetics of Air”. Using another invisible medium, light, he merges the two
to create beautiful patterns, a visual symphony that encapsulates all smell, humidity, density of air, blown
and re-played by every little movement of the visitor. The artist James Turrell has also aspired to picture
the void in his works by intensifying our awareness of it. Turrell creates works that illustrate the physical
11. Jonathan Hill. Immaterial Architecture. London: Routledge, 2006. Print. p. 39

12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Julieanna Preston. Interior Atmospheres. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2008. Print. p. 23
15. Gregory, R. L., E. H. Gombrich, and Colin Blakemore. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Scribner, 1973. Print. p. 263
16. Ibid. p. 263
presence of light in space by immersing the visitors in complete void, lacking any other presence but that of
the human bodies, light and colour. Photographer Andy Lock, on the other hand, creates his “Orchard Park
series” to emphasize the atmosphere within an interior and create an almost unreal space, where shadows
and light fall down and along furniture to illuminate the fact they are more than a collection of objects. 17
In a more literal way, Rachel Whiteread’s installation “Ghost”, casts the void in rooms to portray what we
do not see - the ghost that surrounds us daily with a texture and a soul of its own.
41
The Ago - Henry Moore

Empathy recognizes our human entanglement with spaces and objects the way we recognize
ourselves in other beings. Jorge Luis Borges beautifully describes this phenomena - a man, he says, “sets
himself the task of portraying the world. Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and
kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people.
Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.” 18
Similarly, the notion of projective identification implies that the Self projects fragments of him or herself to
other people he or she interacts with. Thus, one is also capable of projecting those characteristics to space.
Graham Sunderland asserts: “In a sense the landscape painter must almost look at the landscape as if it
were himself - himself as a human being” 19. Another prominent painter Paul Cezanne determines that the
landscape thinks through him and he is the consciousness of the landscape. 20 If we look more irrationally
at architecture and design we can conclude that the same principles apply there as well - a communication
between the body of the designer and the body of the inhabitant. Our minds become mirrors of one
another through projection and identification.
17. Julieanna Preston. Interior Atmospheres. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2008. Print. p. 13
18. Juhani Pallasmaa. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons,
2009. Print. p. 124
20. Ibid. p. 128
Ghost - Rachel Whiteread
42
Aesthetics of Air - Malte Wagenfeld

A Retrospective - James Turrell
43
The Orchard Series - Andy Lock

Finally, the principle of aesthetics, so deeply rooted in design, becomes a matter of recognizing
ourselves into a space or our incapacity to do so. Before it became concerned with beauty the concept of
aesthetics (from Greek aisthesthai “perceive”) was related to perception by the senses. 21 We crave beauty
on our daily basis. Fyodor Dostoevsky intensifies that “man can live without science, he can live without
bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the
world” 22. The experience of beauty exists in the eye of the beholder and rises from grasping the complexities
and mysteries of life and our reflections on it. Interior design is a discipline mainly related to aesthetics and
style but I would like to take the opportunity to exemplify that as beauty can be a visual delight it is also
an extremely complicated understanding of the world and requires all senses and the imagination. Our
sense of aesthetics is re-arranging the world with our projection on it. “Beauty is not a detached aesthetic
quality, the experience of beauty arises from grasping the unquestionable causalities and interdependences
of life.”23 Thus, our imagination needs betweeness to be able to fill it in with its vision of beauty, translate
it into matter and create spaces that are projections of our emotions, dreams and character.
Aesthetic enjoyment is objectified self-enjoyment. To enjoy

aesthetically means to enjoy myself in a sensuous object diverse
from myself, to empathise myself into it. 24
The relationship between human perception and architectural space is extremely subjective and
abstract. We are strongly dependent upon our environmental experiences, where light, colour, tactile and
44 audile phenomena control our physical and mental well-being.
If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it

wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy
of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our
existence. 25
Such are the spaces Peter Zumthor encloses in his buildings. As an architect, highly concerned with
the full experience and atmosphere architecture has to offer, his emphasize on the interior in evident. He
leaves a lot of emptiness for our imagination to emerge, drowning the visitor in boundless spaces, where
the perception of reality surrenders to the dream of the fantasy. Although being deprived of one-to-one
encounter with Peter Zumthor’s masterpieces I recently visited the Sensing Spaces exhibition at the Royal
Academy and was delightfully surprised to discover some genuinely mastered interior settings, even though
detached from a context to sit in. The simplicity and mystery of form in the Grafton Architects installation
left me speechless with eyes wide open to the ceiling, gratified by the flow of light, painting the pure natural
stone in different colours. As a contrast, the complex and fragile structure of Kengo Kuma created a visual
21. Worringer, Wilhelm. Abstraction and Empathy; a Contribution to the Psychology of Style. New York: International Univer-
sities, 1953. Print. p. 15
22. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Boardman Robinson, and Constance Garnett. The Idiot. New York: Modern Library, 1962. Print.
2009. Print. p. 12
24. Worringer, Wilhelm. Abstraction and Empathy; a Contribution to the Psychology of Style. New York: International Univer-
sities, 1953. Print. p. 15
25. Pope Benedict XVI in “Meeting the Artists” quoted in: Juhani Pallasmaa. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied
Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print. p. 12
Baths - Peter Zumthor
and sensual poetry, enhancing the sense of smell and wonder. Finally, getting lost in Li Xiaodong’s labyrinth
forest, I could sense every presence of another human and hear every crack from the pebbled floor, while
imagining myself immersed in an entirely suburban setting. Visiting this exhibition and especially observing
people’s reactions and interactions with it made me wonder of why we are less able communicate such
experiences in an interior from our daily routines. I believe that when interior elements can characterize
a spatial enclosure, the interior is no longer bounded or limited by the structure of architecture and can
become an entity of its own. The facade of the building reveals very little from the building’s story and
identity, it is the interior’s role to reveal its full mystery and secrets - to release the floating spirit of its 45
atmosphere and to illuminate the inside visible.
The interior is transitional due to the movements of light, shadow, sound and air in the voidness
of Ma. The spaces we sculpt in our minds, guided by those qualities, are no superior to the physical ones
that we call real. Indeed, the designer has the capacity to create a scenario of imaginative inhabitation.
The capacity to imagine, to liberate oneself from the limits of

matter, place and time, must be regarded as the most human of
all our qualities. Creative capacity as well as ethical judgement
call for imagination. It is evident, however, that the capacity
of imagination does not hide in our brains alone, as our entire
body constitution had its fantasies desires and dreams. 26
In one of my latest briefs, I was challenged to re-conceptualise an ex-social housing estate in East London -
the Balfron Tower. 27 To prolong the community generating scheme its architect Erno Goldfinger had been
aiming for, my concept for the circulation spaces of the tower was to adapt them to a more inhabitable
space rather than just a trespass and to blur the boundaries between the public and the private. My interest
2009. Print. p. 17
27. Vrabcheva, Zarya. “Vertical Village.” Behance. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2014.
Sensing Spaces Exhibition - Grafton Architects
46
Sensing Spaces Exhibition - Kengo Kuma

in the concept of empathy flourished with this project and I used it as the main drive for the scheme. I
explored how softening the interior of the tower from the inside would bring neighbours closer to each
other’s personal lives through reflecting poetically the movement of people in space. The corridors, were
designed as a series of small interior gardens, visualising the presence of figures inside the apartments,
while the texture of the facade was perforated with light-transmitting rods to both enhance the granulated
nature of the concrete and let light through from the inside-out. By redefining functions and re-inventing
the way we use materials and objects, we also re-define how we dwell in the world. If we manage to surpass
the conventional, common uses of substance and matter, we are able to re-imagine our surroundings and
our interiors. Moreover, materials related to the site not only continue the story of a place but also ensure
the sustainable character of the new interior.
47
Vertical Village - Re-generating Balfron Tower
Imagination occurs constantly while walking around our cities. We give meaning to things that
others might discard by projecting our living characteristics onto them. We experience the world though
our senses but imagination recreates it so that our world is different from that of others. Artists and
designers have used the interior space as a site to try and find answers to the questions of how we dwell,
through representing its physical and conceptual boundaries in spatial occupation. Re-conceptualising
those boundaries also re-defines our perception of negative matter and the invisible. Pallasmaa points out
that “we do not live in an objective world of matter and facts, as commonplace naive realism assumes.
The characteristically human mode of existence takes place in the worlds of possibilities, moulded by our
capacities of fantasy and imagination” 28. In this case, positive space is replaced by the negative, physical
by the imaginary and the senses are surpassed by mind. If our ability to imagine is diminished by external
factors, the risk of incomprehensible future is tremendous.
2009. Print. p. 127
III.
The Vigour of
Illusion
TRANSITION AND REALITY 49
“Insofar as you and I see the same

moon, we do so because it is an
illusion that we are separate.
We are the same being.
We only appear separate for the
convenience of filling space.“
George Spencer-Brown xii

illusion n.
{ɪˈl(j)uːʒən}
2. †a. The action, or an act, of deceiving the bodily eye by false

or unreal appearances, or the mental eye by false prospects,
statements, etc.; deception, delusion, befooling.
b. The fact or condition of being deceived or deluded by
appearances, or an instance of this; a mental state involving the
attribution of reality to what is unreal; a false conception or
idea; a deception, delusion, fancy. 1
S
o far I have aspired to illustrate ways in which the body acts on the interior either physically
or mentally, projecting its emotions and self either leaving traces in time or temporary visualising
its imaginable being. In this final chapter, however, I would like to explore the power of space to
project its character on the human – through illusion. In fact, I consider this to be the most effective tool
in design as it gives a different experience beyond the visible and touchable, beyond the senses, . Illusion
is a volatile imagination, lasting from seconds to whole lifetimes, that affects the human mind with what
is beyond physically there and sculpts another reality, which the person is not aware of from before. It re-
creates the world as no one remember’s or imagines it, taking the mind to another space, another feeling.
The thin boundary between imagination and illusion could be described in terms of diverse levels of
50 awareness and voluntary action. In the latter, the human mind could be incapable of recognising illusion
from reality and experience a radically different world than the people around him, believing that his is the
real one. Illusion could stimulate all senses, in fact it very often separates the senses and creates sensuality
in which what you see is not what you touch, what you smell is not what you taste.

Before we continue the reader should remember for a brief second that the world around is a
constant flow of particles in time and space. Illusion is part of our lives. All that we experience through our
senses is to some extent illusion that simplifies our world from it really is. We are deluded daily within our
own existence- we feel to be standing still, while we are accelerating at 67,000 m/h around the sun, we feel
solid but it fact we are mostly empty space and particles bouncing off each other. 2 In a recent talk English
producer John Lloyd explains what is invisible to us as “everything that matters, except everything, and
except matter.” 3 He implies that we only see the skin of things, moreover the closer we look at everything
the more it disappears, becoming smaller and smaller particles until it remains empty space. 4 In fact, what
Lloyds also indicates is that we see matter but we cannot see what holds matter together or draws it apart.
For centuries, scientists and philosophers have studied and debated what constitutes reality. It
is a notion, beyond any doubt as difficult to define as illusion. In his book “Imagery and Illusionism in
Architecture”, Henry Lagorio takes us on a journey through history of how different cultures and epochs
1. “Illusion” Def. 1. Oxford English Dictionary. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2014. Web. 23 Aug. 2014.Web.
2. John Lloyd. “What’s Invisible? More than You Think.” YouTube. TED, 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
have expressed their version of reality through imagery or on the contrary their views/believes of the
unreal. 5 He argues that each culture is in search of their reality as reassurance of security and truth.
Lagorio asserts also that:
It could be proposed that images related to expressions of fancy

and hallucination have no rightful place in architecture, if one
subscribes to the principle that the architect is responsible for the
life, health and safety of people. Yet, the fantastic does occur, and
when such visionary architecture is encountered, sensations of
bewitchment and terror approved by society. 6
The doctrine of “animism”, for example, nurtures from the Far East as a belief that “all inanimate
objects, including, elements of architecture are inherently considered to possess spiritual beings or should
within their images” 7. In the Western world of today, although deprived from the essence of magic, the
action of humanizing objects and buildings with names or projecting human traits on their physical skin
is not uncommon either. This is not solely a need to blur the division between architecture and people but
also one to inject wonder and mysticism in the everyday.
Extending the essence of the metaphysical state into our known world of materialities we break
through the fifth wall xiii of our senses and allow existence between perception and truth. This time the 51
transitory experience of space is affecting the mind taking it beyond existing parameters.
In the processing of images, subjectivity is most fundamental

because reality is often limited to one’s conscious self. If
objectivity was considered the sole source of self-knowledge, life
would be missing the magic of invention. 8
Illusion is undoubtedly a double sides concept - its power can be deluding and negative as well as positive
and delightful. In the next chapter I will discuss the effects of suppressed imagination or that dulled by the
overwhelming flow of images and digitalized realities. However, I would like to challenge the commonly
accepted negative connotation of the concept, presenting both sides, and argue that illusion is not
necessarily misguiding but is also able to disclose and reveal the mysteries of the unseen betweeness and
thus bring overwhelming delight.
5. Henry J. Lagorio. Imagery and Illusionism in Architecture. Padova: La Garangola, 1967. Print.
6. Ibid. p. 85
7. Ibid. p. 24
8. Ibid. p. 21
52
DELUSION
“Whatever is a reality today,
whatever you touch and believe in 53
and that seems real for you today,
is going to be, like the reality of
yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.“
Luigi Pirandello xiv

F E A R
Massive concrete blocks, thousands of little windows, grey, demanding, inanimate. Brutalist
architecture at its most intimidating state. The year is 1984, nevertheless we are not in a George Orwell’s
novel xv, but rather walking the streets of Sofia. A city spanning back 2400 of history seems to have none
left walking around the newly constructed socialist blocks in its neighbourhoods. Coldness, monotony,
greyness all enhance the overruling sense of realism and “equality”. Illusion is a powerful tool and can
indeed be misleading from the true nature of things. A phenomena such as environmental determinism is
a way in which architecture is thought to influence the political and social view of people. It is a Marxist
premise that matter determines consciousness and has been put into practice in socialist countries to
induce a sense of utopian living and equality, when in fact the lives of people have been suppressed in every
way of their daily routines. 1
In his book Socialist Spaces, David Crowley gives an encompassing description of the power
of environmental determinism in the communist states at the time. He argues that “to change how a
person thought and behaved one must change his or her material surroundings” 2. The city, he claims
“was the strongest factor for organizing the psyche of the masses” 3, while domestic space was used as
a machine to shape the popular taste of the crowd. Depersonalization was a method for equality and
deprivation of identity where personal expression were suppressed and humans were turned into things.
54 The illusion, sculpted into the spaces people inhabit seems to “demonstrate the existence of values and
close-knit solidarity in spite of the alienating effects of socialism” 4. All art and architecture had to reflect
and appraise the ideology of the state and thus was taking form of pieces soaked with pomposity and
pseudo social realism. Architecture was represented in structures beyond human scale, which aimed to
defend from dreaming, artistic freedom and questioning, of feeling human and seeing the true essence of
being. Here the obvious effect of unification and standardization in aesthetics and taste opposes the ideals
of phenomenologists, who argue that every human being experiences his or her own subjective reality.
The disengagement with the rest of the world and the limitations from knowledge and art ceased the
capacity of human imagination and thus desire to oppose and create. Illusion created a viscous loop, which
projected socialist architecture’s qualities of unification and standardization onto the human individuals
and society, making them feel nonliving, part of the whole, commodities.
Uncovering an exterior shell frozen by time, however, we reveal interiors full of life, reflecting
people’s eagerness to break out of imposed personalities, very often evident on the facades as well. The
living spaces filled almost overabundantly with objects of memories and creations of the imagination were
the only free canvas, constantly changing to re-imagine the world, to escape the everyday and release the
self-expression.
1. Crowley, David, and Susan Emily. Reid. Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc. Oxford: Berg, 2002. Print.
p.11
2. Ibid. p. 11
3. Ibid. p. 11
4. Ibid. p. 15
55
Socialist Spaces - From the Inside Out

F E T I S H
Even today, in Western society, environmental determinism, although less obvious, exists. Our
lives are customized by devices that control almost every aspect of the modern society. Living in a world
of 3D projections, virtual simulations and augmented realities, we are unable to experience the magic
of illusion if it is not computer stimulated. The capacity to imagine has lost its appeal to the desire to
produce new forms of art - virtual and fake. Svetlana Boym denotes that “Once, opium, leeches and a
return home was a panacea for a nostalgia. Now it is technology that has become the opiate of the people
that promises speed, ease and oblivion of everything except the technological products themselves” 1.
She intensifies that “technology is not a goal in itself but an enabling medium. While nostalgia mourns
distances and disjunctures between times and spaces, never bridging them, technology offers solutions and
builds bridges, saving the time that the nostalgic likes to waste” 2.
Freud used the term “fetish” to describe how similarly to “primitive” people, “civilized society”
injects objects with magical and human characteristics. 3 Marx, on the other hand, suggested that it was
fundamental to capitalism to make objects into commodities xvi by imbuing them with meanings and making
them desirable, in a sense, to complete people and send them messages about status and distinction. 4
Today, empathy is highly recognizable in advertising, tricking us to believe that we could be someone else
easily with the help of a product. Empathy in the society of the spectacle xvii is not an embedded quality but
56 a mere illusion used as a promoting tool to stimulate and encourage us it into vast consumerism.
English writer and sustainability expert Jonathan Chapman depicts: “Material consumption is
driven by complex motivations and is about far more than just the acquisition of newer, shinier things. It
is an endless personal journey toward the ideal or desired self that, by its very nature becomes a process
of incremental destruction” 5. Chapman also proposes a solution “to avoid such wasteful obsolescence”
by implying that “products must mutually evolve alongside users, sustaining value by revealing their true
beauty only through the slow passing of time.” 6 As one of the strong impulses in a capitalist system is to
sell and constantly renew, to eradicate the past, repaint and refurbish, we are in need of a growing tendency
to respect inanimate things and build stronger symbiosis with our environment.
1. Svetlana Boym. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001. Print. p. 53
2. Ibid. p. 63
3. Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Norton, 1975. Web.
4. Crowley, David, and Susan Emily. Reid. Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc. Oxford: Berg, 2002. Print.
p.11
5. Jonathan Chapman. Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences, and Empathy. London: Earthscan, 2005. Print. p. 53
6. Ibid. p. 48
An Anatomical Barbie
57
The Golden Age - Factory Fifteen

58
DELIGHT
“Reality is not that which

is perceived but that 59
which makes perception
possible. “
Deepak Chopra xviii

B
ut as illusion in architecture has the power to make people feel small and unworthy, the same
must have a counter effect and make human beings aware of who they are, what they are made
of and why they exist. We not only have the ability to project ourselves onto other matter but
also to introject its character on ourselves. This is an illusion that does not delineate from reality but
creates a different reality, out of our comfort zone, stimulating all senses, not digitally but though the
power of materiality, form and mostly the invisible matter between them.
Going back to the notion that the interior is a space of betweeness and transition from one state to
another, illusion as a spatial quality renders vivid what is beyond our sensual perception and understanding.
Space is in constant motion, a mixture of matter and substance that interact with each other. If we see
beyond our visual perception, we may start to re-conceptualize objects not with their form and exterior
but rather their invisible qualities. For example, jewellery is gold given specific character from the designer,
space is a framed void in which our interactions act on and simultaneously are influenced from. We
may begin to understanding separate objects and fields as a whole. Herzog and de Meuron portray this
notion in architecture implying that “matter is but a means to an end: the immaterial, mental processes of
understanding, learning, and developing always have a priority”. 1
It is indeed architecture that renders vivid the invisible around us – light we can’t see but we see
the illuminated surface it hits, time we can’t see but we can see things around us change and carry the time
60 inside them, we can’t read each other’s minds, but a space has the capacity to connect the human bodies
in it as well as bridge the gap between them and its creator through empathy. In such way we experience
architecture and the world in its totality – through the invisible. Pallasmaa asserts the role of architects and
designers not so much as inventors but as transformers of reality. 2 We should aim for more illusive, dream
world of irrationality, abstraction and sensual distortion, where the physical boundaries and the wall of our
senses are broken. The dream world has been related to imagery until the 20th century when it starts being
related to consciousness. 3 Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes in-between reality as “the moment in which
individual elements begin to lose their clarity, the moment in which objects merge with the field”.4 In the
installation “Blind Light”, Antony Gormley immerses the human bodies in an endless ground, blurred in
the boundaries of the space with no exit, where one could feel like being both deep in the sea or high up in
the mountain. He challenges the notion that architecture is just a shelter, making you feel safe, but rather a
place one might get lost into and provoke his or her uncertainty of location. Similarly Olafur Eliasson uses
colour to intensify another reality in his installation “Feelings are fact”. Visitors are encouraged to get lost
in an immersing fog of colour that changes continuously and disconnects them from the outside world.
1. “183 Archeologie de L’Imaginaire.” Herzog & De Meuron. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2014. Web.
2009. Print. p. 16
4. Ibid. p. 45
Blind Light - Antony Gormley
61
Feelings are Fact - Olafur Eliasson

Theodor Lipps, in fact, explains perceptual illusions with empathy. 5 In this sense, empathy through
illusion in architecture can be viewed as space projecting itself onto its visitors. A space so powerful that it
takes us out of our perceptions for reality and opens our eyes to the unseen. As Juhani Pallasmaa defends
“the duty of architecture and art is to survey ideals and new modes of perception and experience, and thus
open up and widen the boundaries of our lived world.” 6 Empathy here means that the human being and his
or her mind are transformed by the surrounding environment, space, interior, subconsciously letting them
to believe he or she is somewhere else... even someone else. An interior space should function as another
person with whom the human body and mind converse. Mario Praz describes his affection from space
as becoming part of it: “I see myself as having become an object and an imagined museum piece among
museum pieces” 7. In fact we are the spaces we inhabit and it is their duty to keep us feel embodied and
spiritual human beings.
The debate between art and science about illusion is a constant one. Science regards it as mere
error while the arts ingratiate it with privilege. As English psychologist and philosopher Richard Gregory
denotes “the artist is deliberately using illusion to approach reality, without being able to state in words
what exactly is his aim, a circumstance which need not invalidate his achievements.” 8 Artists are the
first to experiment with illusion through their works, on stage and with space as a tool to discern the
processes of perception. Although in science, illusions are discarded, very often it is illusions that lead to
key inventions and solutions. For example looking through curved glass gives new parameters of how we
see the world around us and ourselves within it. Architecture, standing somewhere in the middle between
62 art and science should embrace illusion and use its vigour to illuminate reality. Delacroix declares in his
journal that “those things which are most real are the illusions I create in my paintings.” 9 In fine art, the
concept of illusion is highly cherished. Picasso was one of the first to express discontent with the realist
and conventional representations to visual perception. He introduced the concept of the 4th dimension,
time, into his works by painting not what he saw but what he thought would happen. Giorgio de Chirico,
the Italian surrealist takes the viewer out of their place with his series “Metaphyscial Interiors”. He believed
that he was “endowed with an ability to perceive objects and spaces within a new sense of structural
order” 10. In 1919 de Chirico wrote: “Illusion has become more than an illusion of the objective world – it is
a revelation, creating a vision of a new world.” 11 Another artist Alfred Barr concludes: “If we stop to think
which is the most “real” we find ourselves moving from aesthetic to metaphysical speculation. For here
what seems to us most false and what seems most remote from everyday reality is perhaps the most real
since it is least an imitation.” 12
5. C. Montag, J. Gallinat, and A. Heinz. “Theodor Lipps and the Concept of Empathy: 1851-1914. “ (American Journal of Psy-
chiatry 165.10(2008): 1261. Web
2009. Print. p. 150
7. Mario Praz quoted in: Edward Hollis. The Memory Place: A Book of Lost Interiors. London: Portobello, 2013. Print. p. 150
8. R. L. Gregory. E. H. Gombrich, and Colin Blakemore. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Scribner, 1973. Print. p. 248
9. Delacroix quoted in: Ibid. p. 245
10. “A Metaphysical Interior by Giorgio De Chirico.” Arts Connected. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2014. Web.
11. Ibid.
12. Alfred Barr quoted in: R. L. Gregory. E. H. Gombrich, and Colin Blakemore. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Scribner,
1973. Print. p. 255
The Victory Metaphyscial Interior with Biscuits
Rene Magritte Georgio de Chirico
Breaking the frame of the two dimensional entity, we can observe illusion in the three dimensional
realm through the works of prominent artists and designer. Referring to Olafur Eliasson’s installations
once again, I want to illustrate his astonishing way of taking the viewers to places and states they do not 63
expect to be in. Such is the “Sun” installation illuminating Tate Modern’s turbine hall in 2003. In this case
the illusion is even double. The visitors occupy a power station, which has been adapted as a museum, led
to believe they are inhabiting a miraculous unearthy space. Another one of his works “Riverbed” conveys
the richness of simple riverbed setting in an interior of a gallery. Provoking the visitors to interact with it,
he exemplifies the fragility and temporality of such a landscape and the beauty of imperfection. Here, the
illusion is that it is something so everyday and familiar, but feeling like a dream in its context. The visitors
are physically involved and become part of the piece. It drives the illusion very far, it is treated as something
completely artificial when it is actually real. Eliasson takes the landscape from a gallery out of the painting
onto its floor, imitating life and blurring the boundary between art and nature. One could almost sense the
breathing of the Earth in the closed interior of the gallery.
One of the primary motivations in architecture is the desire to

express the “total image” of an organic system containing the ideals
and experience of its creator. 13
Space can also act as a catalyst for a collective experience in which people empathise with each other.
Such are the installations of Marina Abramovic, where the group condition is immensely strong and the
flow of human energy and empathy is almost rendered visible. In her performance “Imponderabilia” from
13. Henry J. Lagorio. Imagery and Illusionism in Architecture. Padova: La Garangola, 1967. Print.p. 101
1977, she and her partner Ulay create a passage for the visitors with their bodies. The liminal space turns
the viewers into performers as they try to squeeze past the naked bodies in a state between uncanniness
and familiarity of other beings. Abramovic and Ulay disintegrate the personal space and boundary that
exists between humans and emphasize the tight connection we all have with one another.
64 Riverbed - Olafur Eliasson
Imponderabilia - Marina Abramovic & Ulay

Using space as a visual playground, artist Esther Stocker transforms our vision of a closed spatial
entity with her illusional installations. “Geometric Rooms” uses simple black slabs to completely alter a
white room as if it is pixelated or decomposing into small pieces. Richard Wilson is another artist playing
with spatial transformations. His brilliant piece “20:50” in the Saatchi Gallery completely takes the visitors
into an epic illusion and disorientation from the physical. Filling the whole void of the space with oil, he
creates a holographic field that reflects the entire other half of the gallery transforming it into vertical
infinity. With every little blow over the mirror, the sea of oil gently distorts its surface in small waves. Tara
Donovan, on the other hand, uses everyday, conventional objects and creates magical sculptural pieces
that release their identity and complexity. From paper cups to buttons, Donovan injects commodities with
strong character and creates illusional landscapes that feel almost like living organisms that breathe and
move.
In design, the interior is also subject to various interventions that give it qualities, experienced
as beyond real. In the BanQ restaurant in New York City, a wooden canopy animates the ceiling as a
dissolving interior of a cave. The seemingly soft and flexible structure is made out of wooden planes, each
precisely outlined to match the harmony of those around it. In the same city of New York, Steven Holl
re-generates the traditional and historic Department of Philosophy in NYU with a luminous staircase.
It’s structure penetrates the building vertically, simultaneously creating a contrast and blending gently
in its context. The textured banisters let light through in different patterns and change according to the
times of the day and seasons. The people climb up or down a moving painting of light, altering position 65
and pattern reflecting their movements. These pieces exemplify our need of illusion to understand our
surroundings from another angle. If we look at interiors as spaces generated by our bodies but also having
lives of their own, we might re conceptualise our view of interior design as containment to rather a living
body, transition between birth and death, reflecting and enhancing our lives. In this sense, if feelings are
irrational, architecture and especially the interior as it possesses more freedom, should liberate themselves
and be provocative and thought stimulating as the rest of the arts. Objects and materials are in constant
metamorphosis as biological beings and we might see them as not just living but also feeling, speaking,
hearing.
As rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by
understanding them, imaginative metaphysics shows that man
becomes all things by not understanding them...for when he does
not understand he...becomes them by transforming himself into
them. 14
Louis Kahn was one of the most influential architects to talk about materials as if they were living
organisms. He portrays: “Even a brick wants to be something. If you are ever stuck for inspiration, ask your
materials for advice. “You say to a brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ And brick says to you, ‘I like an arch.”15
14. Vico “New Science” quoted in: Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phenom-
enology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print. p. 86
15. “Louis Kahn: The Brick Whisperer.” Architecture Lab. N.p., 28 Feb. 2013. Web. 31 Aug. 2014. Web.
Antony Gormley also poses a question that relates to our capacity to feel our surrounding matter: “what it
feels like to be an object, a wall, a gap between those?” 16
Illusion leads to creation. Our perception of architecture should surpass the notion of shelter to a
space that outlines and shapes our consciousness. English psychologist and philosopher Richard Gregory
claims that illusion is a natural component of life, emerging from early age in children, who are liberated
from the constrictions of society and suppressions of conventionalities and each create their own worlds
of fantasy and magic. 17 He exclaims: “My praise of illusion is given not only because of its ability to create
amusements, but also because it can sustain a power which is of inestimable value in our search for
knowledge, our lasting enjoyment of life and our search for the fragile key to reality.” 18 We forget who
we are or where we come from it is through decomposition and “illusion” that we break down matter,
transcend substance and experience our true nature. Senses of men can be distorted and be misleading
in certain situations, which intensifies our capacity to get lost and experience a diverse reality. Designers
should turn away from the practicalities of convention and aim to create spaces that reveal more than
what is physically there, spaces that make us question, wonder and illuminate the sublime nature of our
existence. Illusions are unearthy experiences that seduce us from reality as we know it.
To find a balance between the science of water and the exhilarating

qualities of experience, consider the many states and trans
formative properties of the substance. We might consider water
66
a “phenomenal lens” with powers of reflection, spatial reversal,
refraction, and the transformation of rays of light. 19
Finally, illusion defends the idea that the building is a source of becoming not a finished piece. This
acknowledges the provisional and ephemeral character of life. We need to treat all matter as transitional,
transforming objects according to their use, instead of replacing them. As we reinvent a space it reinvents
the way we dwell in it, design it, occupy it. Interior is less about directing people but rather seducing
them. To surpass the everyday loop of mass media, we should comprehend the hidden experiences and
mysteries around us without the help of technology. The simplest act of opening a door must give delight
and be a profound experience in our consciousness. It is no longer a question of object or non-object
but of seeing and non-seeing, of whether we are capable of perceiving or not. How do we achieve magic
in a space without technology? This is what we should try to discover when we create spaces. Illusion is
uncontrollable and it is architecture’s task to render illusion of delight.
16. Gormley, Antony. “Sculpted Space: Within and Without.” TED. 13 May 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. Talk.
17. R. L. Gregory. E. H. Gombrich, and Colin Blakemore. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Scribner, 1973. Print. p. 248
18. Ibid. p. 246
Geometric Rooms - Esther Stocker
67
20:50 - Richard Wilson

68 Paper Cups - Tara Donovan
BanQ - Office dA
A Journey between Land and Sea - Oscar Tusquets 69
NYU Department of Philosophy - Steven Holl

Conclusion
71
“To open ourselves to perception,

we must transcend the mundane
urgency of “things to do”. We must try
to access that inner life which reveals
the luminous intensity of the world.
Only through solitude can we begin
to penetrate the secret around us. An
awareness of one’s unique existence
in space is essential in developing a
consciousness of perception”
Steven Holl xix

I
am closing the frame of this work with Antony Gormley’s finished piece “Capacitor”, which
appeared as a study drawing in the introduction. It truly reflects my aspiration to illustrate man’s
relationship with his environment and how the body extends in all directions to interact with it
and have an impact on it. I can’t say my piece is finished but it has indeed started moulding into a sculpture
with a form yet unknown. This journey turned out to be my personal exploration of what interior design
is - simultaneously an experiment and a manifesto in which I was not only testing diverse ranges of the field
but also my understanding of it. From cave painting and ruins to contemporary and extravagant spaces, I
was aiming to simultaneously illustrate, discover and re-conceptualise the parameters of the interior.
The Interior is a space very often related to rationalization - shelter, a container of solids that is
assumed to bring order and control activity. As a designer, however, I aspire to re-imagine the interior
as a space that is lived rather than understood. As emotion outlives function, I believe that the physical
body in architecture is only one part of its whole - its core and soul are those irrational emotions growing
inside of it. This core is provisional and ephemeral, but disintegrating over time it carries the invisible
link between past, present and future. Interior design contains the irrational elements essential to all art,
curiosity and surprise through its spatial richness. Looking back, most of my visuals represent works of
Fine Art and strangely enough I have always feared approaching design more artistically and irrationally,
for its functionality and logic have always seemed prevailing during my practice. However in the journey
of writing my dissertation which was a way of negotiating intimate thoughts with a range of other peoples’
72 ideas - I discovered that the interior, balancing between art and architecture, has the freedom to be more
liberated and reflect its provisional character more radically.
Interior spaces should aim to be not just intellectually stimulating but also provoking our inner
most capacities to imagine and dream. In the three stages of the journey I aimed to exemplify how the
empathy between the interior and human is experienced physically and metaphysically. Understanding the
context and identity of a place through memory, creating and visualising our dreams through imagination
and finally surrendering ourselves to the spatial entity through illusion. It is not solely the designers job to
create such spaces but also the viewer to open up and see the beauty and sublime in any place we occupy.
An interior encapsulates and renders the interconnections of materials, objects and people. It is a site which
challenges the way we dwell, interact, remember and discover ourselves and our world - an implicit narrative
that questions our existence, our believes and worries. To resist from manipulation and exploitation,
education should enable our capacities of imagination and empathy to emerge and strengthen.
Real time technologies and the fragmented images of mass media and networking take away
our most human capacities of physical and mental experience in lived time. I have explored how lack
of imagination, replaced by our own creations leads to de-humanising and de-eroticizing our society.
We do not need technology to visualise the fantasy, we are capable to achieve it ourselves. The desire to
communicate with others is a basic human instinct, which satisfies the need to share and record emotions
and experiences. It is a way in which individuals can step outside of their own worlds and step inside
someone else’s world, expanding our knowledge, building up new visions and perspectives. Today these
are highly stimulated through technology and social media, we however, become more and more detached,
losing our capacity to share through direct confrontation.
We need to be consumers of meaning not matter and surpass the daily notion of commodities.
We need substantial resources, that allow us to experience our dreams and high-most desires that make
us feel alive. These would create a sense of empathy and emotional, sustainable attachment. We act on
our environment and empathy is a generator of a social consciousness not just to each other but to the
rest of the matter that surrounds us. Creating an emotional union and respecting the inanimate would
prolong the life of objects around us. Humans are not centred on the planet. The complex of thoughts
and ideas that I have tried to engage with in this dissertation have presented themselves amongst art and
design disciplines as well as in discussions on well being, sustainability and the mysteries of aesthetic and
emotional pleasure. I have asked myself - what would it mean if we change our relationship with space?
Would it break the vicious loop of materialism and excessive exposure in favour of defending the enigma
of life.
Finally essential knowledge and experience are not moulded in words, concepts theories. Our
communication takes place on a chemical level, and although we are rarely aware of it, most of our
understanding of the world comes from the power of the invisible, not the solid. The interior is the closest
connection we have to the outside world and as such it should render vivid how our habitat touches us. 73
The interior is fragile, ephemeral and transitional like human life. It is not the objects themselves but rather
their change and movement in time. It does reflect life in any possible way - the way we work, eat, entertain,
make love, die. An experiment - provisional as life - that reflects the fragility and beauty of nature and
the living. Transcending substance is not just transparency, it is a liberation from the physical and hard, a
feeling of freedom for the soul. It is in our nature to move, to be in transit, to change and be changed. Such
should be the places we dwell in.
Interior design as a body that reconstructs itself, builds up, hosts activities and rituals, hides
mysteries, encapsulates the void, making people attached to its soul, a jungle, a museum, an insidevisible
city.

ENDNOTES
i. An excerpt from the film “Stalker” (1979) by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. “Stalker” is a controversial
film, especially for its epoch ( totalitarian communist regime in the USSR), that deals with the concepts of
fear, dystopia, delusion and hope. The setting is an imaginary place called the zone where three men are
in search of a room that would fulfil all their dreams. I have chosen to include this particular quote as it
summarizes my intentions to illustrate the fragile, the soft, the provisional in our everyday lives. Similar
to the movie, which is beautiful to watch and completely immerses the viewer without being concerned
of time and logic, the interior spaces I aspire to live in and design are such that surpass the everyday
practicalities and make their inhabitants either question or absorb the qualities of the invisible.
Stalker. Dir. Andrey Tarkovsky. MosFilm, 1979. Film.
ii. Sogyal Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist lama and meditation teacher. In his book The Tibetan Book of
Living and Dying he speaks about the nature and essence of human mind. It is a lucid introduction to the
practices of meditation and obtaining true human capacities.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206731.The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and_Dying
iii. John Cage is an American avant-garde composer whose inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas
profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music.
http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/88339/John-Cage
iv. Osculant adj. - 1. Biol. Situated between and connecting two groups of organisms. Oxford English
Dictionary.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/132964?redirectedFrom=osculant#eid
74
v. Juhani Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect, educator and critic and a current practitioner of the phenomenology
of architecture. Pallasmaa’s architectural practice spans projects in urban design; building design; and
exhibition, product, and graphic design. He is also the writer and editor of many books concerned with
experience of space and the body’s place in it.
http://www.samfoxschool.wustl.edu/juhani_pallasmaa
vi. This is a quote from the novel “Midnight Children” by Indian writer Salman Rushdie. In the genre of
magical realism, the book tells the story of a family after the independence and separation of India.
http://www.salman-rushdie.com/blog/midnights-children/
vii. Rhodopi is the largest mountain chain in Bulgaria, situated in the South-western part of the country,
on the border with Greece. Not shown on every map, Mugla village is located near the town of Smolyan
and is lastly registered with population of 351 in 2007.
viii. Rakia is a Bulgarian traditional alcoholic drink (around 60-70%), usually derived from fruits and from
home-production
ix. More than 500 villages in the territory of Bulgaria have been completely abandoned and another 150 are
facing extinction in the next decade.
x. David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and scepticism.
http://www.uboeschenstein.ch/texte/spencer-brownAUM2
xi. Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of
philosophy with the same name. The principal subject is “being qua being”, or being understood as being.
It examines what can be asserted about anything that exists just because of its existence and not because
of any special qualities it has. Also covered are different kinds of causation, form and matter, the existence
of mathematical objects, and a prime-mover God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_(Aristotle)
xii. George Spencer-Brown is a British mathematician, whose book Laws of Form inspired explorations in
philosophy, cybernetics, art, spirituality, and computation
http://www.lawsofform.org/
xiii. Breaking the fourth wall is a commonly used principle used in performance arts when the actors break
the wall between them and the audience and make them part of the content. Once this is achieved, there is
a premise that there is another imaginary audience behind the existing and to achieve contact with it the
performers must break the fifth wall.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=12982154780A08060100&page=0
xiv. Luigi Pirandello is an Italian dramatist and novelist. In 1934 he won Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
for his “bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage”.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1934/pirandello-facts.html
xv. “1984” is a novel by English novelist George Orwell. Probably the definitive novel of the 20th century, a
story that remains eternally fresh and contemporary, and whose terms such as “Big Brother”, “doublethink” 75
and “newspeak” have become part of everyday currency,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell
xvi Commodification n. - The action of turning something into, or treating something as, a (mere)
commodity; commercialization of an activity, etc., that is not by nature commercial.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/37198?redirectedFrom=commodification#eid
xvii. The Society of the Spectacle is a book by French Marxist theorist Guy Debord in which he illustrates
the degradation of human life through mass media and commodity fetishism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
xviii. An expert in the field of mind-body healing, Indian medical doctor Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned
speaker and author on the subject of alternative medicine.
http://www.biography.com/people/deepak-chopra-9542257
xix. A quote from “Questions of Perception: Phenomenology in Architecture”. Steven Holl is an American
architect, educator and critic considered part of the phenomenology movement. He is recognized for
his ability to blend space and light with great contextual sensitivity and to utilize the unique qualities of
each project to create a concept-driven design. He specializes in seamlessly integrating new projects into
contexts with particular cultural and historic importance.
http://www.heartmus.com/steven-holl-biography-3135.aspx
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CITED SOURCES
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Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001. Print.
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Chapman, Jonathan. Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences, and Empathy. London: Earthscan,
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Oct. 2014. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/>.
76 Crowley, David, and Susan Emily. Reid. Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc. Oxford:
Berg, 2002. Print.
Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Norton, 1975. Web.
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Print.
Hill, Jonathan. Immaterial Architecture. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez Gómez. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Ar-
chitecture. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print.
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Hollis, Edward. The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories.
London: Portobello, 2009. Print.
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“Louis Kahn: The Brick Whisperer.” Architecture Lab. N.p., 28 Feb. 2013. Web. 31 Aug. 2014. <http://archi-
tecturelab.net/louis-kahn-the-brick-whisperer/>.
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eto Oy, 2005. Print.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2005.
Print.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: John
Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print.
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national Universities, 1953. Print.
ADITIONAL SOURCES
Bachelard, Gaston, and M. Jolas. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon, 1994. Print.
Brooker, Graeme, and Sally Stone. Re-readings: Interior Architecture and the Design Principles of Remodel-
ling Existing Buildings. London: RIBA Enterprises, 2004. Print.
Campen, Crétien Van. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008. Print.
Grosz, E. A. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001.
Print.
Haas, Richard. Richard Haas, an Architecture of Illusion. New York: Rizzoli, 1981. Print.
Jung, C. G. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971. Print.
Koren, Leonard. Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. California: Imperfect, 2008. Print.
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artsconnected.org/resource/94233/a-metaphysical-interior-by-giorgio-de-chirico>.
Scott, Fred. On Altering Architecture. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Smith, Jean. Breath Sweeps Mind: A First Guide to Meditation Practice. New York: Riverhead, 1998. Print.
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Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. Print.
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M.I.T., 1976. Print.
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FICTION
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Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children:. New York: Knopf, 1981. Print.
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LECTURES & TALKS
Fairs, Marcus. Talking Interiors. 23 Jan. 2014. Lecture.
Gormley, Antony. “Sculpted Space: Within and Without.” TED. 13 May 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. <http://
www.ted.com/talks/antony_gormley_sculpted_space_within_and_without>.
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79
DEFINITIONS
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IN sideVISIBLE

Royal College of Art

Let them believe.

And let them have a laugh at their passions.

Because what they call passion actually is not some

emotional energy, but just the friction between their

souls and the outside world.

And most important, let them believe in themselves.

Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is

a great thing, and strength is nothing.

When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible.

When he dies, he is hard and insensitive.

When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant.

But when it’s dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death’s companions.

Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness

Because what has hardened will never win. i

I. The Memory Palace 25

II. The Matter of Imagination 37

III. The Vigour of Illusion 49

My tutor Barry Curtis for being immensely supportive

My Friends for being the ultimate distractions I needed

Cover image - Drawing by Author

IKEA Augmented Reality Catalogue 17

Afrum (White)- James Turrell - photo by Florian Holzherr 18

BODY XXIII, 2011 Carbon and casein on paper 23

I. The Memory Palace - Transition and Fragility

Mugla School - Author’s image 29

Mugla School Interior - Unknown 29

School Walls - Ivan Dokov 29

Chauvet Cave Drawings - 30 000 BC 30

Abandoned Baths in Sofia, Bulgaria 31

Unframed Ellis Island - JR Artist 32

Casablanca - Georges Rousse 32

The Factory - Ricardo Boffill 35

II. The Matter of Imagination - Transition and Void

Mela Dream House - La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela 40

The Ago - Henry Moore - photo by John Meadows 41

Ghost - Rachel Whiteread 42

A Retrospective - James Turrell 43

Orchard Park series - Andy Lock 43

Sensing Spaces - Grafton Architects 46

Forget Your Past - Nikola Mihov 52

Socialist Panel Blocks in Sofia 55

Socialist Panel Blocks Facade in Sofia 55

Eclectic Interior in a socialist block- Author’s image 55

Humanising - A Dolls Impossible Body 57

Augmented Reality - A still from The Golden Age by Factory Fifteen 57

Untitled - Tara Donovan 58

Blind Light - Antony Gormley 61

Feelings are fact - Olafur Eliasson & Ma Yansong 61

The Victory - Rene Magritte 63 13

Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits - Giorgio De Chirico 63

Riverbed - Olafur Eliasson 64

Imponderabilia - Marina Abramovic & Ulay 64

Geometric rooms - Esther Stocker 67

20:50 - Richard Wilson 67

Paper Cups - Tara Donovan 68

A Journey Between Land and Sea, Naples’ Underground - Oscar Tusquets 69

NYU Department of Philosophy - Steven Holl 69

“We are fragmented into so many

IKEA Augmented Reality Catalogue

“We are not moving towards some

John Cage iii