On the Interstitial and the Waiting

• Published in: Interiors : design, architecture, culture architecture, culture, 2021-09, Vol.11 (2-3), p.110-131
• Main Author: Liekens, Jo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: (Interior-)architectural agency; agonism; agonistic staging; micro-politics
• ISSN: 2041-9112; 2041-9120
• DOI: 10.1080/20419112.2021.1956151

_room within this article is approached through projective architectural interpretations of the room type studiolo. The notion of the projective here refers to a projecting activity - of latent possibilities, of possible futures-through projects, regardless their scope and scale. The article builds on two architectural artifacts of our office STUDIOLO architectuur 1 that substantiated in an interweavement with a doctoral research-through-practice 2 . Almost every project worked on in the office, operating in the city on the scale of the dwelling through acupuncture-like interventions, contains such a studiolo. In turn, and in line with this room type's historical signification as a place of study - a retreat from and yet a probing lens which, fascinated, draws in the world - each of these studiolos contains or emanates what could be characterized as its specific object(s) of study. A mutual inscription of interior and polis is explored in this article as one of the main objects of study stored on each of these studiolos' shelves. The two specific studiolos figuring in this article will be approached by foregrounding how thinking and designing from within them about the contraction of interior and polis substantiated architectural artifacts with a certain political and ethical agency. The two projects subsequently serve to briefly propose and discuss the idea of an agonistic staging as a potential for (interior-)architecture, if it wants to pick up its capacities of acting politically and ethically in the world.