The Story of the Interior: How We Have Shaped Rooms and How They Shape Us

An exhilarating and eclectic volume on the social, cultural and technological history of interior design from prehistory to the present day, revealing how spaces shape our lives and why it matters.

From traditional nomadic dwellings to state-of-the-art airports, through monumental temples and Baroque palaces to high-rise apartments and high-fashion boutiques, The Story of the Interior explores an exciting array of inside spaces from around the world to reveal how the fundamental elements of a room have evolved and endured.

Organized in three parts – The Room, The Private Interior and The Public Interior – the book presents a fascinating account of how the interior has been conceived and thought of from antiquity to the present day. By calling attention to the most basic elements of inside space – walls, doors, windows, furniture, ambience to name a few – this engaging exploration delves into how private and public interiors actively shape the way we live, work, learn and play.

The book spans a wide range of iconic and offbeat examples drawn from the world of architecture, urbanism and furniture design, as well as art installations and imagined spaces. Brooker deftly guides us through interiors as diverse as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project, the Prada store in Marfa, Texas, and Sou Fujimoto’s NA House, as well as the rock-cut Buddhist temples of India, medieval European castles and ancient Egyptian tombs, to unveil the drastically different and surprisingly similar spaces that surround us.

The result is a fascinating tour of global interiors, tracing the genesis and evolution of these places and how they help us understand human presence and behaviour.