An article by Jane Rendell elucidating a feminist approach to critical spatial practice introduced me to Dr Julieanna Preston’s vocation and how she creates an academic context for interior design, highlighting its departure from conventional practice. She is a writer, artist, architect, performer and spatial designer. Her work includes site performances and writing about spatial politics, feminist philosophies and new materialism. After further reading, what I found potentially transformative in Preston’s vast work paraphernalia is the intention and ability to academically use interiors as arenas for political activism and ethical dialogue. I find it thrilling to observe her liberate interior surfaces through tools of feminism as she shuffles between construction, material characteristics, crafting techniques, and the embodied understanding of interior materials and space. In this write-up, I shall elaborate and reflect on thoughts, tools, processes and techniques developed by Julieanna Preston in her Project SHEET GOODS - dismantling appropriation of standardised interior materials and, by extension, that of women.

The journey of the feminist movement has been a long one. Significant progress has been made in realising its relevance across various disciplines at the turn of the previous and current century. During the initial years of the new millennium, the conversations around Feminism in architecture were not as prominent. The word feminist in interiors is even more infrequent. Stemming from years of gender biases and stereotypes, interior design has been dismissed as a 'woman's domain' or a ‘decorative practice'. At the same time, architectural practice has been exalted as a 'serious business' or 'man's job’. As a female architect, I aim to explore the intellectual grounds of the intersection of interiors and architecture. I believe interior design to be a highly intimate and personal craft, and recently, I’ve come to understand the feminist adage that personal design is often political. Exploring the political discourse on Feminism in the architectural context had been on my mind as I sought to situate my practice in the contemporary field of theoretical inquiries surrounding interior and architecture. 

Figure 01: Childe Hassam’s 1918 Tanagra Painting

For far too long, women’s bodies were domesticated and deemed a decorative element belonging indoors. The Tanagra painting in Fig. 01 exemplifies this. In her book, Zaida Martinez gives a historical account of the gender politics of space and ensuing gendered power dynamics as visible in Greek and Roman homes. Patriarchal structures have always influenced women’s experiences within domestic confines. This idea was exacerbated by industrial capitalism, which further equated women’s bodies with inanimate interiors. Thus, interiors were viewed as feminine and ordinary, and the materials and decor used in the interior were considered superficial and mundane. There is a need to restructure these patriarchal hierarchies related to interior and architecture, starting from the inside out.  

Preston argues that materials risk becoming mere specification and surface appearance-driven. If we tie this with the earlier assumption of women being analogous to an interior setting, we realise a profound effect, mirroring women's invisibility or patriarchally appropriated visibility. This interrelation also provides an opportunity to visualise the feminist repositioning of interiors and women by countering Preston’s anesthetisation of interior surfaces and decoration. Feminist tools facilitate slippages across art, architecture, theory, and social practice through deliberate militancy.  A balancing act between liberal and radical feminism, Preston’s work is associated with critical ideas that reshape the built environment through feminist spatial practices such as experimental pedagogies, political struggles and alternative materialities.

Allow me to explain how Preston rethinks the standardisation of interior materials through the SHEET GOODS project. Here, she proposes overcoming power and patriarchy visible in the ‘appropriation’ of interior materials by disrupting their intrinsic order and placing interior design practice at the confluence of gender, politics, and technology. She applies ‘Civil disobedience’ techniques to demonstrate how plywood, MDF, T&G Flooring, and Gypsum Board can transcend their normative designations and associations in interior work. In addition to patriarchal subversion, she re-evaluates material strengths and weaknesses - and the gendered tropes surrounding the two.

1. TREAD

In the TREAD experiment, Preston uncloaks the apparent structural integrity of an inert interior surface - the tongue and groove pine flooring. It is configured from a rigid and upright state to a limp, supple yet heavier state, similar to the common protestor’s act of physically ‘going limp’. Preston tapers their ends further using a spoke shave tool. As seen in Figure 02, the pine sections are cantilevered off a wall. Their plateaued position and shredded ends give in to gravity and appear to be ‘going limp’. This exercise highlights the inappropriateness and artificiality of flooring surfaces being considered stable or even with the ground. 

Preston also references how Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece inspired her to explore the ‘resistive yet yielding principle’ in her material investigation. It made me look at clothing as interior surfaces, and the correlation drove me to mull over – What are we so afraid to find when we strip an interior space of its garment - or veneers? What happens if the assigned characteristics of these materials are subverted so that they no longer serve their intended purpose? I think the reimagined roles of garments and surfaces as a ‘clothed’ body and ‘dressed’ space question the preconceived expectation of what is socially acceptable. Iterating this brings agency to both embodied and surface levels.

Figure 02:  Preston, TREAD (2008)

2. SHEAR and HUNG

In SHEAR’s case, Preston expunges an interior material’s patriarchal expectation of utility. Fileting a 10 mm thick gypsum board, essentially gypsum plaster sandwiched between two paper sheets, as shown in Figure 03, Preston initiates a counter-intuitive exercise. By negating the board’s fire-resistance properties – she renders it unusable and brutalises its utility. To go inside the sheet, turn its insides out, and orchestrate acts of disobedience and feminist revelation. Undoing a material displays resistance. I came to think of a woman’s body's role when doing hard industrial work such as this in a masculine environment that has been socially ‘ill-suited’ for her to labour in. This thought originates as a product of patriarchal appropriation within the shadow of a capitalist market- based on the principles of homogeneity and rationalism. In such an economy of patriarchy, women become, at best, products of exchange. Preston liberates this misappropriation.

Similarly, in the HUNG experiment, Preston challenges the conventional arrangement and role of plywood strips in interiors. As seen in Figure 04, she hangs a bundle of 25 mm thick and 2500 mm long wafer-thin veneer plywood strips and plunges it towards the floor. She exploits the material’s supposed inertia by tampering with its structural integrity. 

Figure 03:  Preston, SHEAR (2008)

Figure 04:  Preston, HUNG (2008)

3. SWELL

Preston re-examines the homogeneity and standardisation of a widely used interior material for the SWELL experiment. Medium-density fibreboard (MDF) is a standard material used widely in interiors due to its workability, versatility and smooth surface. However, it cannot withstand strain and moisture. Preston infuses the MDF sheet with moisture in the sculptural object SWELL using a wallpaper steamer. Very poetically, she describes how– surface sections blossomed as particles and freed themselves from the hold of resinous glue. She extends this experiment to the public and observes their bewilderment at the artificial growth and the fear surrounding allegedly cancerous airborne MDF particles. With this object, Preston brings the history of interiors tête-à-tête with modern manufacturing technology and raises awareness about its carcinogenic properties and ecological damage. 

Figure 05:  Preston, SWELL (2008)

The SHEET GOODS project is exemplary for its exploratory nature, forgoing didacticism and favouring a process-oriented approach that facilitates experimentation. The commentary on techniques and processes initiates a journey of discovery, even when the outcome is elusive, as the process becomes the subject of investigation. What appealed to me is the project's integration of commentary on feminism, institutionalised capitalist economics, political protest dynamics, and materialism within the context of interior design. This approach beautifully situates interior design within a broader discourse, moving beyond its traditional confines of mere decoration and dwelling. 

Preston's experiments TREAD, SHEAR, HUNG and SWELL intricately focus on the materiality itself, exemplify the potential of theoretical experimentation in architectural discourse and are therefore remarkably transformative. As promised, the SHEET GOODS project examines the relationship between women, the built environment, and material objects to combat predetermined gender prejudice, rescue interior design practice from its patriarchal pollution and challenge standardised material expectations. She shares how Material Feminism typically finds its place in the social sciences, a territory designers should traverse. Preston emphasises the importance of Material Feminism in social sciences, which designers should consider. It is crucial for interior design practice to participate in discourses that advocate material feminism in the built environment and its techno-scientific framework. Her work on the constitution of mind and matter forwards the SHEET GOODS project and leans toward neo-materialism. In doing so, the scope of her work is additive in nature and paves the way for new investigations, thereby being transformative.

(Extracted from original essay “How is Jullieana Preston’s feminist investigation of ‘standardised sheet materials’ transformative in exposing their patriarchal roles and designation in the practice of interior design?” submitted at the Royal College of Art, London, 2024)

References:

1. Jane Rendell, ‘Only Resist: A Feminist Approach to Critical Spatial Practice’, Architectural Review, 2018 <https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/only-resist-a-feminist-approach-to-critical-spatial-practice> [accessed 10 March 2024].

2. ‘Julieanna Preston’, Julieanna Preston <http://www.julieannapreston.space> [accessed 10 March 2024].

3. 
   

4.