This thesis argues that women were seminal to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney, Australia. Covering the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, this study identifies Thea Proctor, Nora McDougall, Margaret Lord, Phyllis Shillito and Mary White as foundational leaders who progressively advanced interior design in Sydney through individual and collective understandings of design. Focussing on their contributions to this development, this study explains complex interrelationships between women and modernity in interior design. This emergence of the discipline and profession in Sydney situates the initiatives of these five women at a transitional phase of the field???s global development when ???interior decoration??? is challenged by modern attitudes and artistic theories of ???design???. Working as individuals, Proctor and her successors advance the profession???previously characterised as a ???natural??? pursuit for women of ???taste??? and ???style??????by their artistic, rational and practical approaches to interior design. At a time when no distinct discipline exists in Sydney, the women offer instruction and forge new directions by reformulating previous overseas traditions: incorporating a wide-range of aesthetic and theoretical conceptions of design, demonstrating common and different approaches to practice, and integrating changes in requisite knowledge and skills in response to their times. The women???s programs are conventional and progressive, common and diverse, universal and particular in content and meaning. Working within a variety of settings, the women importantly establish professional jurisdiction situating interior design in a modernist context. Significantly, their contributions challenge past readings that have diminished the early women of interior design, and at the same time, embody all the conflicts, ruptures, paradoxes and contradictions that are cental to modernity. This research redresses the lack of institutional history of interior design in Sydney and links theories of modernism and modernity to issues of gender and profession to explain the women???s significant contributions to interior design at a critical juncture of the field???s development. As such, their stories and legacy of design in Sydney contribute to a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.

This thesis argues that women were seminal to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney, Australia. Covering the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, this study identifies Thea Proctor, Nora McDougall, Margaret Lord, Phyllis Shillito and Mary White as foundational leaders who progressively advanced interior design in Sydney through individual and collective understandings of design. Focussing on their contributions to this development, this study explains complex interrelationships between women and modernity in interior design. This emergence of the discipline and profession in Sydney situates the initiatives of these five women at a transitional phase of the field???s global development when ???interior decoration??? is challenged by modern attitudes and artistic theories of ???design???. Working as individuals, Proctor and her successors advance the profession???previously characterised as a ???natural??? pursuit for women of ???taste??? and ???style??????by their artistic, rational and practical approaches to interior design. At a time when no distinct discipline exists in Sydney, the women offer instruction and forge new directions by reformulating previous overseas traditions: incorporating a wide-range of aesthetic and theoretical conceptions of design, demonstrating common and different approaches to practice, and integrating changes in requisite knowledge and skills in response to their times. The women???s programs are conventional and progressive, common and diverse, universal and particular in content and meaning. Working within a variety of settings, the women importantly establish professional jurisdiction situating interior design in a modernist context. Significantly, their contributions challenge past readings that have diminished the early women of interior design, and at the same time, embody all the conflicts, ruptures, paradoxes and contradictions that are cental to modernity. This research redresses the lack of institutional history of interior design in Sydney and links theories of modernism and modernity to issues of gender and profession to explain the women???s significant contributions to interior design at a critical juncture of the field???s development. As such, their stories and legacy of design in Sydney contribute to a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 58).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 30).

A growing number of interior design stakeholders believe that increased levels of research will lead to the legitimization of the profession, an expanded and specialized body of knowledge, professional recognition, disciplinary status, and sustainability of the profession. Despite the potential importance of research in the profession, few strategies exist for how research can have a more effective role within interior design. The main purposes of this study were to provide a strategy for incorporating research into interior design, and provide educators with information about how interior design programs could utilize the strategy. The qualitative study was based on a triangulated research design that included: (a) semi-structured telephone interviews with 29 participants (11 from educational institutions, 14 from professional practice, and 5 from professional organizations); (b) the collection of documents from all study participants; and (c) a case study, conducted over a five day period, within a professional practice firm in the United States. The study findings provide insight into the perceptions held by educators, practitioners, and members of professional organizations about research, and research in interior design specifically. These perceptions, combined with other information, led to the Theoretical Framework for Research in Interior Design. Consisting of three distinct, but interconnected, cultures: (a) design, (b) research, and (c) knowledge management, the Framework explains who, what, when, where, why, how, and with what consequences research is conducted, translated, used, and disseminated in interior design. The implications of the Framework for post-secondary interior design education programs suggest that first-professional undergraduate programs could focus on interior design, first-professional masters programs could focus on knowledge management, and post-professional masters and Ph.D. programs could focus on research. This arrangement would provide each level of post-secondary education and each program type with a specific focus, and would provide the discipline with a range of graduates capable of taking on a variety of roles within professional firms, educational institutions, professional organizations, industry, or government. Overall, the Framework provides a strategy for ensuring that the interior design profession retains its design identity, and expands and capitalizes on its research identity. At the same time, the Framework introduces a new identity that can bring designers and researchers together in more productive and beneficial ways. / February 2005

A growing number of interior design stakeholders believe that increased levels of research will lead to the legitimization of the profession, an expanded and specialized body of knowledge, professional recognition, disciplinary status, and sustainability of the profession. Despite the potential importance of research in the profession, few strategies exist for how research can have a more effective role within interior design. The main purposes of this study were to provide a strategy for incorporating research into interior design, and provide educators with information about how interior design programs could utilize the strategy. The qualitative study was based on a triangulated research design that included: (a) semi-structured telephone interviews with 29 participants (11 from educational institutions, 14 from professional practice, and 5 from professional organizations); (b) the collection of documents from all study participants; and (c) a case study, conducted over a five day period, within a professional practice firm in the United States. The study findings provide insight into the perceptions held by educators, practitioners, and members of professional organizations about research, and research in interior design specifically. These perceptions, combined with other information, led to the Theoretical Framework for Research in Interior Design. Consisting of three distinct, but interconnected, cultures: (a) design, (b) research, and (c) knowledge management, the Framework explains who, what, when, where, why, how, and with what consequences research is conducted, translated, used, and disseminated in interior design. The implications of the Framework for post-secondary interior design education programs suggest that first-professional undergraduate programs could focus on interior design, first-professional masters programs could focus on knowledge management, and post-professional masters and Ph.D. programs could focus on research. This arrangement would provide each level of post-secondary education and each program type with a specific focus, and would provide the discipline with a range of graduates capable of taking on a variety of roles within professional firms, educational institutions, professional organizations, industry, or government. Overall, the Framework provides a strategy for ensuring that the interior design profession retains its design identity, and expands and capitalizes on its research identity. At the same time, the Framework introduces a new identity that can bring designers and researchers together in more productive and beneficial ways.

A growing number of interior design stakeholders believe that increased levels of research will lead to the legitimization of the profession, an expanded and specialized body of knowledge, professional recognition, disciplinary status, and sustainability of the profession. Despite the potential importance of research in the profession, few strategies exist for how research can have a more effective role within interior design. The main purposes of this study were to provide a strategy for incorporating research into interior design, and provide educators with information about how interior design programs could utilize the strategy. The qualitative study was based on a triangulated research design that included: (a) semi-structured telephone interviews with 29 participants (11 from educational institutions, 14 from professional practice, and 5 from professional organizations); (b) the collection of documents from all study participants; and (c) a case study, conducted over a five day period, within a professional practice firm in the United States. The study findings provide insight into the perceptions held by educators, practitioners, and members of professional organizations about research, and research in interior design specifically. These perceptions, combined with other information, led to the Theoretical Framework for Research in Interior Design. Consisting of three distinct, but interconnected, cultures: (a) design, (b) research, and (c) knowledge management, the Framework explains who, what, when, where, why, how, and with what consequences research is conducted, translated, used, and disseminated in interior design. The implications of the Framework for post-secondary interior design education programs suggest that first-professional undergraduate programs could focus on interior design, first-professional masters programs could focus on knowledge management, and post-professional masters and Ph.D. programs could focus on research. This arrangement would provide each level of post-secondary education and each program type with a specific focus, and would provide the discipline with a range of graduates capable of taking on a variety of roles within professional firms, educational institutions, professional organizations, industry, or government. Overall, the Framework provides a strategy for ensuring that the interior design profession retains its design identity, and expands and capitalizes on its research identity. At the same time, the Framework introduces a new identity that can bring designers and researchers together in more productive and beneficial ways.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

With the onset of one of the worst economic downturns in recent history, the face of poverty is changing. This project seeks to explore a design solution aimed at helping a newly emerging segment of the population: the “half homeless”, formerly middle class individuals/families who lost their jobs and homes during the recession. Set in the building known as the Lucky Strike Power Plant, the project contains two distinct, but overlapping, programs: 1) multi-family housing, and 2) a continuum of supportive services accessible to both the residents and the community at large. The main focus of this project is the housing component; more specifically, exploring an unconventional housing typology designed to encourage interaction between the residents, as well as the residents and non-residents. Ultimately, this project is a study of how through the interplay between public vs. private and mass vs. void, design can heal, inspire, and bring people together.

MOTIVATION Mindfulness is the active pursuit of focused attention, and through practice has been shown to benefit psychological and physical well-being. While mindfulness is not a new idea, it has only tangentially been linked to Interior Design such as through performative objects (Niedderer, 2007 and 2014) which promote personal reflection before enacting a choice. If mindfulness is the active pursuit of mental presence, then Attention Restoration Theory (ART) is a passive route by which environmental cues imbue a resurgence in attention capacity (Kaplan, 2001). ART studies exemplified successful restoration through scenes of nature, and unsuccessfully in outdoor urban scenes (Berto, 2005) while interior environments went unexamined. Encouraging mindfulness and ART through interior design is worth exploring as it converges from the studies of Niedderer, Kaplan, and Berto. PROBLEM How can mindfulness be supported by, or achieved through interior design, and what design principle(s) align with the practice of mindfulness? How can interior spaces and artifacts facilitate ART to passively or unconsciously support mindfulness in a residence? METHODS Evaluations of mindfulness and ART case studies as related to design, and environmental interpretation will inform associative aspects to understand and employ relevant design elements. RESULTS People prefer different spaces in which to experience mindfulness where the variety of colors, sound levels, lighting, privacy, smells, and textures affect them to be attuned. Based on an site interview, the designer is informed on specific interaction styles, design attributes, and solutions to pursue. Questions prompting personal reflection will lead to a personalized design which was determined to be an important psychological tool to achieving mindfulness. The use of warm and cool colors were found to be more intriguing than achromatic settings. Placing design artifacts in the space which encouraged or even required interaction from the client were found to encourage their mental presence in the moment as well. Views to outdoor, natural scenery from the space or at a minimum objects that represent nature add to the presence of mind and attention restoration. The designer educates the client on the impact of pertinent design principles such as light, color, scale, balance, texture, and harmony to obtain design by-in. REFLECTIONS/CONCLUSIONS Creating a mental and physical connection for the client to the space is essential to achieving mindfulness through interior design. Mindfulness and Attention Restoration Theory augment each other from different psychological and physiological positions when the client is actively and passively engaged with their surroundings; linking the two through interior environments is key. A designed residential space that reflects the inhabitant’s interactive tendencies, prompts exploration, requires choice, and arouses intrigue will promote mindfulness, and attention restoration. Incorporating textured surfaces, natural materials, interactive objects, and purposeful views are important design goals. 1. Niedderer, K. (2007). Designing Mindful Interaction: The Category of Performative Object. Design Issues, 23(1), 3-17. DOI: 10.1162/desi.2007.23.1.3 2. Niedderer, K. (2014). “Mediating Mindful Social Interactions Through Design.” The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness. Ie, A. (Ed.). Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. 345-366. DOI: 10.1002/9781118294895 3. Kaplan, S. (2001). Meditation, Restoration, and the Management of Mental Fatigue. Environment and Behavior, 33(4), 480-506. DOI: 10.1177/00139160121973106 4. Berto, R. (2005). Exposure to restorative environments helps restore attentional capacity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25(3), 249-259.