The Modern Interior

through the last years of the twentieth century, and into the early years of
the twenty-first century, in response to many of the same forces that had
determined it passage through earlier years. The determination of many
architects to influence and control the interior spaces of their buildings
continued to play an important role. The English architects John Pawson
and Norman Foster, for example, took full responsibility for their interiors,
the former supervising every last detail of his strikingly minimal creations,
the latter controlling the design of many of the items destined for
the inside spaces of his buildings. Many other contemporary architects,
including Arata Isozaki in Japan, Jean Nouvel in France and Frank Gehry
in the us, also sought to control the interiors of their buildings. In recent
years the role of architects as the creators of interiors has been joined by
that of product designers, including the French Philippe Starck, as well as
by fashion designers, the American Ralph Lauren, the Italian Giorgio
Armani and the English Jasper Conran among them. The enhanced role
of ‘designer-culture’ in recent decades has meant that all designers,
whatever their specializations, have come to be seen first and foremost as
creators of ‘lifestyles’ and capable, therefore, of designing the interior
environments in which those lifestyles are lived out.
The ‘minimal interior’, based on Modernism’s machine aesthetic,
emerged in the 1980s but has sustained its popularity into the early
twenty-first century. It was especially visible in the abstract forms of
late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century commercial spaces,
including Tokyo’s fashion boutiques and international luxury hotels. A
2005 design by the Japanese group Superpotato, led by Takashi Sugimoto,
for the Park Hyatt Seoul Hotel, exemplifies minimalism in action. With its
white walls, minimally furnished spaces and sparse, cantilevered shelves,
Shiro Kuramata’s 1987 store, created for Issey Miyake, provided a highly
theatrical backcloth for the ‘art objects’ displayed within it, while the interior
of Giorgio Armani’s flagship fashion store in Hong Kong, designed
by Claudio Silvestrin in 2002, took the idea of the minimal interior to new
levels. Its exaggerated simplicity and use of concealed lighting produced a
dramatic backcloth for the stylish clothing displayed within it. So ubiquitous
was the minimal interior at the beginning of the twenty-first century
that it even entered the realm of popular television. In a 2004 episode of
the popular bbc comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous, for example, lead
character Edina was so desperate for her kitchen to be in the latest, ‘ultraminimal’
style, she had her angst-ridden, heavily bespectacled female
interior designer remove the stairs. 27 On entering the room, Edina nearly 201