This essay appears in the AD reader series ‘The Diagrams of Architecture,’ edited by Mark Garcia.
Perhaps, the interior diagrams began with the interest in analyzing the role of female in domestic space, especially in the works of Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher, or Dolores Hayden. In Mary Haweis’s writing, interior diagramming takes the place of aesthetic concenrs, expressing the idea that the surrounding environment is the extended mechanism of the body, rather than being dictated by architectural programs. This idea of extending ourselves to the interior environment is echoed by Dorothy Todd and Raymond Mortimer’s The New Interior Decoration (1929) in discussing the decorative interior, in which interior decoration is considered the adormnent of personality. Beverly Gourdon further explored this body-environment relationship in her writings, while focusing particularly on the gendered history of the interior, suggesting that the female identity and the interior space are interchangeable.
