505The Specular Spectacle of the House of the Collector.docx

505
The Specular Spectacle of the
House of the Collector
Helene furján
introduction
Visiting nineteenth-century English architect Sir John Soane’s
Museum at
Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, one notices that the view is
continuously redi-
rected into and through the house by architectural apertures and
mirrors stra-
tegically located throughout the interior. The house is primarily
known for
Soane’s collection of antique artifacts and architectural prints,
including a
portfolio of Giovanni Piranesi’s original proofs. The collection
was organized
in anticipation of transforming Soane’s private, professional
collection into a
public museum. Helene Furján highlights this lesser-known
collection and the
disposition of mirrors throughout the house that reflect,
fragment, and multi-
ply views of the antiquities.
Furján speculates on the significance of the mirrors in reference
to the
emergent technology’s symbolic and philosophical meaning to
the represen-

tation of knowledge, nature, religion, and painting. Soane’s
ongoing integra-
tion of mirrors, according to Furján, increased illumination by
directing light
into windowless areas of the house. As a result, the mirrors
inadvertently
emphasized shade and a perception of depth on the surface of
the antiquities.
Dramatic spatial illusions were constructed with mirrors that
reflected spaces
and rooms, and gave the overall appearance of a larger, deeper
house. She
observes that this light guides the viewer’s gaze toward the
details of antique
fragments throughout the house. The placement of antiquities
and the mirrors
were orchestrated to produce such effects as doubling their
quantity and space.
Mirrors were fashionable machined objects at the time, such
that Furján
characterizes the Soane house as combining “antiquity and
modernity.”* The
mirrors and antiquities visually merged in the same way as did
the programs of
house and museum, or private and public. The house was
configured to display
the collection of antiquities for his practice. The result recalled
Renaissance
cabinets of curiosity that rescaled the full-scale interior into
portraits of a
miniaturized world when viewed in convex mirrors. Furján
concludes that
Originallyappeared in Assemblage, no. 34 (1997):
57–69.

Weinthal, L. (Ed.). (2011). Toward a new interior : An
anthology of interior design theory. Retrieved from
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Created from asulib-ebooks on 2019-11-23 11:19:58.
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Soane installed mirrors as a constructed look on antiquities. His
latent identi-
fication with classical architects and his ambition to preserve
his longevity in
their company, along with his cultural affiliations, conditioned
him to prepare
the collection for posterity in the form of a public museum.
———

Much will the Mirrour teach, or evening gray,
When o’er some ample space her twilight ray
Obscurely gleams; hence Art shall best perceive
On distant parts what fainter lines to give.
—William Mason, The English Garden
IN 1792 JOHN SOANE, by then a well-established
architect, began building
at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. This was to
mark the start of an occupa-
tion that would extend over threeadjoining sites,
charting a history of con-
tinuous construction and reconstruction. His first house,
at no. 12, was made
possible in largepart by a legacy left by his
wife’s uncle, George Wyatt, who
had died in 1790. The inheritance also allowed
Soane to begin to amass a col-
lection, although his collecting activities here remained
modest—a library
and a set of plaster casts of architectural detail
that inhabited a corridor
connecting the house to his office at the
rear. The first significant museum
space at no. 12 was a roomhe added behind
no. 13 after its purchase in 1808,
a space that was filled with the by then sizable
collections moved from his
country house, Pitzhanger Manor, on its sale in
1810.1 By this date, the house
had already undergone many permutations. Soane

built his final residence at
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, no. 13, between 1812 and 1813
once the existing house
on the site was demolished; it continued to be
altered, in a history that con-
structs a narrative as convoluted and labyrinthine
as the spaces of the house
themselves cameto be.2 By the 1820s, the house
in its present form was
largely in place, although the collections still
expanded and small adjust-
ments were made until Soane’s death in 1837.
[fig. 7.1]
In a surprisingly small space, Soane
managed to elaborate multiple
narratives of display and collecting, exhibiting his
interests as an antiquar-
ian, an architect, and a man of taste in collecting
and storing inscriptions of
culture and history. The objects that bore such
inscriptions encompassed not
only the fragments and collectibles of high culture
and antiquity, but also the
very domestic environment in which they were located.
As a house-museum,
in which the collections cannot be
distinguished from the domestic objects,
the furniture and furnishings, of the house itself,
Lincoln’s Inn Fields not
only incorporated the collection into the house, but
significantly, incorpo-
ratedthe house into the collection.

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THe SPeCulAr SPeCTACle Of THe HOuSe Of THe COlleCTOr
The mirror—the convex mirror in particular—
figuratively duplicates
the collections housed here, and it is perhaps
significant that by the time
Soane died the house and its museum contained
over a hundred mirrors,
most of them convex and most of them concentrated in
the Breakfast Room.3
[fig. 7.2] Re-collecting the interior within their
compass, the mirrors present a
collection of images that capture the carefully

preserved and minutely con-
structed professional environment of a late-
eighteenth-century architect,
the collections of a late-eighteenth-century
antiquarian and connoisseur,
and the domestic interior of a late-eighteenth-
century gentleman. These
mirrors proffer up a miniaturized (and thus
collectible) image of the world of
the viewing subject for the very reflection of that
subject.
Ironically, it is through its very capacity to
distort that the convex mir-
ror most reflects the collecting act, gathering and
concentrating, in compar-
ison with the plane mirror, which merely
“reproduces what lies within its
field.”4 The convex mirror helps to select
and organize the interior, as cru-
cial a part of its arrangement as the furniture it
tends to fix in its images:
“Its curved surface reduced the world to an
idyll, to a small cleanliness.”5
Gathering in the interior, and even what lies outside its
windows, the con-
vex image provides a “coordinated world” reduced
to the scaleof compre-
hension. A domestic object that reflects, and thereby
holds and collects, the
collections, the mirror is also, in its proliferation
in this house, a collection
fig. 7.1: Plan of the ground floor of nos. 12, 13, and 14
lincoln’s Inn fields.
By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s museum

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508
in itself. It is one, moreover, that in its sheer
repetition threatens to exceed
its capacity to organize, confounding and confusing,
or better, dissolving, the
spaces of the house into images.
But the mirror also operates as a figure for
history itself. As Siegfried
Giedion was to note a century later: “History is
a magical mirror. Who peers
into it sees his own image in the shape of

events and developments.”—an
observation that neatly points to the personal
investment to be located in
Soane’s “desire for history.”6 The mirror could
represent, for him, a scrying
apparatus that magically conjured up the image of
the past that he himself
wished to inhabit. This was not simply a desire
to be immersed in the past.
It was a desire to see his collections of
that past in a context of architectural
history that included himself, his work, his role as
preserver of the past, and,
most significantly, the very container of that past, the
house itself. In other
words, the house-museum could function as a
mediation, or even continu-
ity, between the past and the present, or rather,
the antique and the mod-
ern; or indeed, between his own past and a future
safely predetermined by
the frozen collections of art, antiquity, and
domesticity that form the house
as museum.
That in addition to a “union” of the arts, Soane
was interested in a
union between antiquity and modernity can be seen in
this house that, with
its mass of antiquities, is equally filled with
works contemporary with Soane
and is, furthermore, built using the latest
developments in technology and
the latest fashions of design and interior
decoration.7 And the mirror that
populates this interior is itselfa result of the

industrial advances and mass
production of the time:cast plate glasshaving been
produced in England
fig. 7.2. Convex
mirror in the
Breakfast room.
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since1773 at the British Cast PlateManufacturers’ casting

hall in Ravenhead,
then the largest industrial building in the country.8
Cast glasswas quickly
adopted by the Adam school, which also
popularized the overmantel mir-
ror and the ovalframed mirror and returned the
convex mirror to fashion.9
By the time that Soane was building in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, then, the mir-
ror was very much in vogue, an indispensable
item of interior decoration
employed in all manner of ways: pier glasses,
overmantel mirrors, looking
glasses and cheval glasses, pilaster insets, door
facings, display-case back-
ings, convex mirrors, vista mirrors, catoptric devices,
and so on. As such, the
mirrors of Soane’s house are a compendium of
their fashionable usages at
both the end of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth.
By 1825, for instance, when C. J. Richardson
produced a series of
watercolors surveying the house,10 therewere no less
than five pier glasses in
the North Drawing Room to compensate for its
northern aspect. The South
Drawing Room accommodated an overmantel mirror,
a pier glassbetween
the two front windows, and threeconvex mirrors. [fig.
7.3] The Dining Room
held four largeconvex mirrors (with ornamental
circles on the top that were
removed by 1830) set up in the corners of
the east and west walls, adjacent

to mirror-backed niches on the north and south
that contained classical
busts.11 [fig. 7.4] Strips of mirror appeared on
the window frames and on the
fronts of the two projecting piers that separated this
roomfrom the Library,
where, in turn, a pier glasshung between the front
windows over a mirror-
paneled chest. The Breakfast Room had strips of
mirror set into pilasters
and around the glazing of the bookcases. The
museum area housed two mir-
rors: one in the Corridor and another in the
Colonnade, set in the window
recess under an odd and very small oculus
cut in the ceiling. In the Monk’s
Parlor, a largepaneled mirror linedthe north
wall to reflect the colored glass
of the window opposite, and in Soane’s bathroom, a
largeovermantel mir-
ror was divided into threeand canted forward so
that he could see himself
better.12 There would, of course, be many
more: the myriad convex mirrors
of the Breakfast Room and its mirror-backed niche
and overmantel mirror
were yet to come, as were the convex mirrors
and the catoptric niche in the
stair hall. The Library windows facing onto the street
were to acquire mir-
rored shutters, while opposite, those in the
Dining Room facing onto a court-
yard were to acquire angled mirrored panels on
either side. Mirror strips
would be added to a pilaster and a relief
panel in an anteroom between the

Breakfast Room and museum area when it was
rearranged around 1826, and
in 1836, a largeconvex mirror would be
placed in a north-wall recess of the
Egyptian Crypt. And a canted mirror device
was to be set into a window in
the Crypt anteroom, with a pane of glassplaced at
a ninety-degree angle over
one of mirrored glass, designed to reflect light
from above into the depths of
the interior.
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fig. 7.3: View of the South drawing room, showing one of the
convex mirrors.
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fig. 7.4: Convex mirror and bust of dione in a mirror-backed
niche in the
dining room. Helene furján
What is remarkable, though, is not so much
the mirrors’ various
employments, but their accumulation; their association
both with and as a
collection. Here are to be found all the
possible concerns—from the archae-
ological to the fashionable, from the mirroring of
the self to the interiorized
landscape of vista and perspective—that the mirror
could invoke. Their pri-
mary function at Lincoln’s Inn Fields remained, of
course, to multiply the
level of illumination from the inadequate sources of
natural daylight and
candlelight, introducing light into the farthest reaches
of thesecomplex inte-
riors through reflections and refractions.13 But they
nonetheless provided, or
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511
amplified,poetic and picturesque effects of light
and shade, expanded the
spaces of the house, sometimes even providing
the illusion of additional
rooms, and contributed, figuratively and literally, to
the collecting impulses
of the interior.
The mirror of History
During the Middle Ages and beyond, the mirror
received a theoretical usage
that exceeded its power merely to reflect. There
was the mirror of God; the
mirror of wisdom and the mind, which pointed
both to religious truth and to
the world as a place of transient semblance;
the mirror of the soul, a reflec-

tion of ideal virtue; mirrors of creation; and mirrors
of human nature, which
set out guidelinesfor proper conduct. These
figurative (always convex) mir-
rors suggested that the image contained allegorical or
symbolical significa-
tions capable of revealing truth and knowledge beyond
the visual surface.
In otherwords, the mirror contained the possibility
of distilling meaning, if
only its signscould be interpreted; or its surface
besmirched, like the crys-
tal ball or gazing sphere, and its hidden depths
suddenly rise to that surface.
In the medieval mind, such knowledge was usually
connected with
divine agency, and the scryers who made its
recovery their tradewere thus
theological readers.14 But “mirrors” were also
texts, whether exhaustive
books of instruction or histories, that sought to
fix aspects of the world or
of the past within their covers as did the surface
of the mirror: they posited
a belief, which would culminate in the
encyclopedic projects, that the world
could be captured in a text as faithfully as in
the visual arts, reflecting it back
in an objective and unmediated fashion. In the
1590s, for instance, John
Norden embarked on a never-to-be-completed project
to provide a compre-
hensive “chorography” of Britain, his Speculum
Britanniae. Chorographies,
the specular texts perhaps closest to Soane’s own

interests, were a “type of
topographical-historical-antiquarianliterature,” an attempt
to unitean anti-
quarian interest in inscriptions and relics to
history and to a visual and often
pictorial interest in landscape. These written
descriptions accompanied by
mapsundertook to survey minutely both the past and
present of regions in
order to recover and record their identities.15
Visual representation, of course, had a strong
affinity with the mir-
ror. Art had long been tied to the mirror through
theories of mimesis, from
Platothrough Alberti and into the eighteenth
century.16 In painting, mirrors
served most commonly as signsof vanity, but
they also appeared as portents.
An example of the latter, painted by Petrus
Christus in 1449, is Saint Elijah
and the Betrothed, in which the convex mirror
that rests on the jeweler’s
table at the lower right edge of the frame depicts
the future married life of
the betrothed couple collecting their wedding ring. Mirrors
could also oper-
ate as representational aids, revealing what was
otherwise unavailable to

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512
the eye. The convex mirror in Quentin Metsys’s
early sixteenth-century
painting The Banker and His Wife, for instance, shows
a beggar in front of the
window forming the frame for the interior view
presented.In Jan van Eyck’s
Amolfini Marriage, representation was self-consciously
foregrounded, the
mirror’s image not only providing the view of the
roomin front of the pic-
ture plane, and hence of the artisthimself, but
also reinforcing the effect of
his signature placed above it, the medieval eye of
God giving way to the self-
referential authorial gesture.

For Soane, the figurative mirror perhaps most at
home among his col-
lections is the mirror of history. And in the
section of the museum proper
where fragments of antique ruins abound
we find such a mirror. In the
Corridor a largeconvex mirror hangs amid these
fragments, reflecting those
hanging on the walls opposite it. [fig. 7.5]
Moreover,it forms the focalpoint
of a vista receding from the Colonnade and the
Dome area as a visible image
of the fragments that are themselves concealed from
this view by the archi-
tecture. [fig. 7.6] This catoptric trick recalls the earliest
precursor of Soane’s
museum, the cabinets of curiosity whose intention
was to place the world in
a room, forming a miniaturized, representative
universe. These assemblages
of radical heterogeneity collected together wonders
and rarities that offered
not only a mirror of nature but also, through
their very marvelousness, the
reflection of divine agency. And, in fact, the mirror
and the marvel are closely
connected, the word mirror derivingfrom “mir, the root of
mirabilis (mar-
velous, wonderful) and mirari (to wonder at).”17 In
this regard, such cabinets
fig 7.5: Convex mirror
in the Corridor, no. 13
lincoln’s Inn fields.
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fig 7.6: View through the Colonnade revealing the convex
mirror in the Corridor.
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were closeto another display device popular around
the same time,catoptric
boxes that were either linedwith mirrors or
contained two plainmirrors set
at various angles to each otherso that objects or
scenes were multiplied, pro-

viding optical illusions.18
The catoptric box and the cabinet of curiosities
come together in
Soane’s house as a means of creating a
fully internalized world, from the
wondrous universe in microcosm of the cabinet to
the Leibnizian monadic
world of the catoptric device. Indeed, the
catoptric device could be seen as
a cabinet of wonder in its own right, and
Soane’s house, with its Chinese-
box effect of cabinets within cabinets and its
mirrors lining every available
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514
surface, is, in effect, itselfa catoptric device.
Individualcatoptric devices
actually exist in the museum; in particular, the
mirror-backed display niches
composed, in one instance, in the hall, of two
angled mirrors. But perhaps
most significantly, the mirrored shutters of the Library
windows that face
onto Lincoln’s Inn Fields were not linedwith mirrors, as
was common at
the time,on the outside, so that when open they
would bring, along with the
daylight, the image of the park and street into
the house. On the contrary, the
mirrors line the innersurfaces, radically excluding the
outside world when
shut and reflecting in its place the candlelit interior
back to itself.
Is this, then, Soane’s attempt to turn his back on
the world outside and
recreate his own internal world? If so, this is
not yet quitethe space of con-
templation that would characterize the mid-
nineteenth century (figured by
Kierkegaard’s internal reveries), but rather, a
compensatory space, replacing
the marauding urban world outside that
threatened to annihilate or, perhaps
worse, overlook him. Soane substituted for urban
civil society, the arena of

the long and bitter fights in which he was
embroiled, including the extended
battles with his son George, a world of things.
And thesethings had a special,
genealogical, significance. They were not only signsof
culture and history,
they were also signsof Soane’s rise to a gentlemanly
status, markers of taste,
connoisseurship, and antiquarian erudition. Together
they formed Soane’s
own history: the legacy he wished to leave,
the material remainders of his
collecting activities, and a history of architecture.
But the most powerful message evident in the
fragments themselves,
especially those of the Corridor area, may be the
crumbling and decaying
state of thesetraces of history. Bathed in a
musty yellow light, thesepieces
of ruinsspeak of antiquity, in the manner that
Winckelmann himself pro-
posed, as a past age irrevocably lost. The
mustard hue of the Corridor depicts
the sun set on the classical age, and the image
inscribed on the surface of the
mirror suggests the faint vestiges that are all that
remain. In this sense, the
fragments tell of the mortality of artifacts, destined to
“die” as their human
makers do. Soane knew this, and oftenhad his
own work depicted, projected
into a future moment, as ruins. But he was
also clearly interested in artifacts
as markers of a human mortality, to which
his collection of funerary objects

attests. And as the decaying fragments served to
remind, as a memento mori
of the ephemerality of all things.19
Yet, lest this space conjure too well the molding
and musty scene sug-
gested—the sublime infinitude of fragmentation and
ruin and the attendant
losses of meaning—we should remember the
reconstructive element of the
antiquarian trade. The yellow light, just as
readily evocative of the first light
of earlymorning, heralds the promise of ruinsto be
salvaged. And it is no
doubt significant that the Corridor of this
museum is, in fact, a threshold
space, leading to the stairs of the mezzanine
studio above. This architectural
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studio can be seen from below, illuminated by
the bright, clear light of inven-
tion and imagination, a romantic reflection of genius,
framed by the decayed
and ruined fragments of antiquity barely visible in
the yellowed gloom. In
a sense, then, Soane is playfully combining
Gothic gloom with fantasies of
restitution, mortality, and redemption. Though
irrevocably of the past, and
perhaps importantly so, they nevertheless form the
material of Soane’s anti-
quarian and architectural projects: fragments of
classical architecture that
operate as signsof history, didactic architectural
examples, and generative
details.20
Mostof the “antique fragments” are, in truth,
plaster casts and can
therefore be seen as souvenirs,or simulacra, of
ruins. Moreover, the yel-
low light is caught up in the ruse, “for it is
that soft primrose hue so pecu-
liarly adapted for the exhibition of the marbles,
imparting the tint of time to
those who have not yet attained it.”21 Although

Soane did not collect most of
his fragments directly from their source, they were indeed
oftenmade pre-
cisely as souvenirs,the casts taken off ruinsand
ancient buildings visited on
Grand Tours. Not all the fragments are of ancient
origin, but all were seen as
material for the study of architecture and as an
aid to production in the stu-
dio. Thus the fragments would offer several possibilities
for Soane. In anti-
quarian terms, they would be valued for their
“pastness,” that is, their ability
to represent historicity, if not history itself. In
connoisseurial terms, they
served to impress colleagues and (gentlemanly)
clients with his taste and
knowledge. And in architectural terms, they would
provide a catalogue from
which the architect could draw for the invention of
new designs, assembling
and recombining the fragments in new ways. As
PeterThornton points out,
“Soane’s was the collection of a working architect
and was used as an anthol-
ogy of antique architecture and decoration as
well as a teaching collection.”22
But what he does not make clear is that this was
Soane’s design method,
inherited from such architects as Piranesi and George
Dance the Younger:
the collecting together and framing of selected
fragments; or, as Christopher
Hussey writes, speaking of Piranesi’s reconstructions,
the “pouring together,
as from a combined treasury, armoury, and museum

the hoarded relics of an
epoch.”23
In otherwords, the museum collects itselfboth as
the fantasy and fic-
tion of reconstruction, one ordered through the
narrative coherence of
history. It is in this sense that the mirrors of
Soane’s house-museum are
important: as poetic figurations of these
imagistic operations. They reflect,
that is, double, the operation of the museum itself,
providing a vehicle
through which the past becomes accessible to
representation. The con-
vex mirror, in particular that in the Corridor, though
part of the collection
itself, collects history in a catoptric fashion, a
visual trick attempting to pull
the discrete fragments together in a cohesive image
that would form such a
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narrative, a mirroring of the antiquarian trade.24
For the antiquarian, history
so poeticizedin this “delightful” image remains as
evocative as the unread-
able inscription on the ruined monuments of
which his fragments form
the traces. Like the sublime image of the ruined
monument that this scene
evokes,25 the mirrors transform fragments into something
that, though not
a totalizable whole, is nevertheless expressive
of a gathered heterogeneity:
history, in otherwords.
Notes
* Helene Furján, “The Specular Spectacle of the
House of the Collector,”
Assemblage 34 (1997): 60.
1 Sir John Soane (1753–1837) built an extension to
no. 12 behind the existing
house at no. 13 between 1808 and 1809,
containing the central tribune area
that still exists and Soane’s professional offices,
the Colonnade of the present

museum. Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, purchased in
1800 and occupied as a
country residence from 1804 to 1810, was largely
demolished and rebuilt, with
the notable exception of parts of the house worked
on by Soane’s revered first
master, George Dance the Younger. It was to a
greatextent here that Soane began
seriously not only to collect, but to construct the
spaces of his house around, and
even as, the collection.
2 Soane was able to purchase no. 13 by moving
its (obliging) resident into a new
house built at no. 14. The new house at no. 13
occupied parts of no. 12 and in 1823
was extended into the rear of no. 14.
3 The only existing record of the purchase of
convex mirrors for Lincoln’s Inn
Fields is a bill dated 1794 for two from the
opticians P. and J. Dolland. Although
this paper will concentrate on no. 13, and
especially in its later manifestations,
this suggests that not only were theremirrors in no.
12, but that someof them
were convex, placing Soane at the forefront of
their return to fashion around
1800. These mirrors may well have been reused in
no. 13.
4 Wolfgang M. Zucker, “Reflections on
Reflections,” The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism (Spring 1962): 243.
5 Ibid., 245.
6 Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A
Contribution to
Anonymous History (New York: Norton, 1969), 2.
Giedion seems to refer to the

divining properties of the scrying mirror (see n. 14),
although, ruling out an
attempt to foresee the future, he uses it to peer
backward.The phrase a “desire
for history” is from Stephen Bann, who links it to
the renewal of “curiosity” in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
resulting in the spread of interest
in history from connoisseurs, professional historians,
and antiquarians to a mass
public, particularly through such representational
mediums as the historical
novel, history painting, and such spectacles as the
history museum. See Stephen
Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1995),
esp. 3–30.
7 Soane was one of the first in Britain to
patronize contemporary, especially
British, artists. See John Britton, “The Union of
Architecture, Sculpture and
Painting,” in Sir John Soane, Description of the House
and Museum on the North
Side of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, Etc. (London: James Moyes,
1830).
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8 Until the introduction of this industrial
process, glasshad been produced
under a monopoly by the olderand less efficient
blown method that restricted
the size of glasssheets. This method would not
become competitive again until
modernized in 1832 by Robert Lucas Chance,
who developed the “broad” sheet
glassthat, despite the development of patent plate in
1839, would be used for the
Crystal Palace in 1851. Modern “silvering”
techniques, where silver foil replaced
the tin-mercury backing, were not developed until 1840.
9 Historically the predominant type until eclipsed by
casting processes,the
convex mirror returned briefly to popularityroughly
between 1800 and 1820, a
fashion captured enthusiastically in Soane’s
museum. For further details on the
history of the mirror in England, see Raymond

McGrath and A. C. Frost, Glass in
Architecture and Decoration (1937; London: The
Architectural Press, 1961), 314–15.
10 These watercolors were bound together in
a volume entitled “Sketches and
Drawings of the House and Museum J. Soane Esq.,
R.A., 1825,” vol. 82, Sir John
Soane’s Museum Archive.
11 In the Dining Room, the mirror panels
that now surround threesidesof
both Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Soane
over the chimneypiece and Sir
Joshua Reynolds’s Love and Beauty were not added
until very late, sometime in
1836. To my knowledge, they do not appear in
any of the views that contain these
paintings after their hanging around 1829, and they
are certainly missing from the
illustrations for the revised edition of Description
of the House and Museum on the
North Side of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, 2d ed. (London: Levey,
Robson, and Franklyn,
1835–36). This is also true of the mirrors added to
the back of the niches above
the Library bookcases.
12 Some of thesemirrors were to disappear as
the house evolved.
13 The most evident examples are the angled
mirrored panels to either side of
the windows in the Dining Room; the pier glass
set between the two tall windows
of Library, which largely reflects light from the
dining windows opposite; the
lantern in the Dressing Room, which has mirrors
around its base,angled to
diffuse light over the whole room; and the canted

mirror device in the Crypt
anteroom, which not only reflects light into the
basement room, but also provides
reflections of the opposite wall of the Dressing
Room and study and of the
parapet as well as, on the underside, of the
pebbled pavement of the courtyard.
14 Specularii, or scryers, as they were known in
England, were professional
readers of distant events (in time and space)
prevalent in the Middle Ages. They
“read” spherical and semispherical reflective surfaces,
especially convex mirrors
and crystal spheres, interpreting the reflections
through a theological medium.
15 See Stan A. E. Mendyk, ‘Speculum Britanniae’:
Regional Study, Antiquarianism
and Science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1989), esp.,
38–81.
16 As M. H. Abrams notes in his book on
romanticism, The Mirror and the
Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London
and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1953): “The recourse to a
mirror in order to illuminate the
nature of one or another art continued to be a
favorite with aesthetic theorists
long after Plato. In Renaissance speculation the
reference to a looking-glass is
frequent and explicit. ‘What should painting be
called,’ asked Alberti, ‘except
the holding of a mirror up to the original as
in art?’ Leonardo repeatedly appeals
to a mirror to illustrate the relation to nature
both of a painting and the mind of

the painter. . . .As late as the middle of the
eighteenth century important critics
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continued to illustrate the concept of imitation by
the nature of a looking-glass.
Dr. Johnson was fond of this parallel, and found it
the highest excellence of
Shakespeare that he ‘holds up to his readers a
faithful mirrour of manners and
life’” (32).

17 Alan Shelton, “Renaissance Collections
and the New World,” in The Cultures
of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Richard Cardinal
(London: Reakton Press,
1994), 179.
18 Catoptric devices were even found within
the cabinets of curiosity: for
instance, Ole Worm’s museum in Copenhagen, one of
the more famous cabinets
of the mid-seventeenth century, had such a device
in its collection. See Jurgis
Baltrusaitis, Le Miroir: Révélations, science-fiction et
fallacies (Paris: Elmayan/Le
Seuil, 1978).
19 Compare The Artist Contemplating Ancient
Fragments by Henry Fuseli
(Johann Heinrich Füssli).
20 Soane himself described the fragments as
“sermons in stones” that were to
appeal to the antiquary, “who loves to explore
and retrace them through ages
past”; the student, “who, in cultivating a
classic taste, becomes enamoured of
their forms”; and the imaginative man, “whose
excursive fancy gives to each
‘a local habitation and a name’ in association
with the most interesting events
and the most noble personages the pages of
history has transmitted for our
contemplation” (Description of the House and Museum [1835–
36], 13).
21 Barbara Hofland, in ibid., 12. One
hundred fifty copies of the 1835–36 edition
were printed, the text interspersed with poetry and
descriptive remarks by
Barbara Hofland.

22 Thornton also points out that Soane’s
collection of fragments was not
uncommon, although its display may have been;
Robert Adam and Henry Holland
also had them, someof which ended up in
Soane’s own collection. See Peter
Thornton and Helen Dorey, Sir John Soane: The
Architect as Collector, 1753–1837
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), xi.
23 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in
a Point of View (London:
Frank Cass & Co., 1927), 200. John Summerson
strongly suggests this approach to
Soane’s design methodology; that is, the selecting and
recombining of figures and
motifs from a repertoire of stylistic devices. He
even goes so far as to claim that by
1806 this stock of motifs was closed: “They may be
distorted and rearranged, but
they were the old themes, and the old themes alone”
(“Soane: The Man and the
Style,” in John Soane [London: Academy Editions;
New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1983], 14).
24 Soane was clearly interested in historical
narrative subjects in his choice of
art works, an interest that could be seen as a
romanticism such as found in Fuseli,
whom he collected: “Fuseli, the most eccentric of all
romantic artists, valued
poetical (that is, historical or narrative) painting above
realistic art (portraits,
for example)”(Helen Dorey, “Soane as a
Collector,” in PeterThornton and Helen
Dorey, A Miscellany of Objects from Sir John
Soane’s Museum [London: L. King,

1992], 126).
25 Soane “shared the feeling for ‘the terrible
sublime’ evoked in the works
of Fuseli, James Barry, John Martin and John
Mortimer, all of whose work is
represented in his collection though, in the case of
the last three, only in the form
of prints or drawings” (ibid.).
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Gregory Marinic
Internal disconnect: material memory

Chapter 31
Internal disconnect
Material memory in the
John Portman originals
Gregory Marinic
Iconic architectural interiors present a unique challenge and
opportunity for
designers who are charged with their renovation. Considering
the temporal
nature of building interiors in relation to forces of consumption
and trend, this
chapter considers the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre, Jean
Baudrillard, and
Fredric Jameson to discern broader socioeconomic forces
impacting materi-
ality in John Portman’s late Brutalist architectural interiors. As
a forerunner of
twenty-first-century interior hyperspaces in Las Vegas, Dubai,
Abu Dhabi, and
elsewhere, Portman’s early works – specifically the Hyatt
Regency Atlanta,
Westin Peachtree Plaza, and Detroit Renaissance Center – serve
as precedents
for contemporary entertainment-based environments worldwide.
In 1967, Port-
man unveiled the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and redefined
generational expecta-
tions for downtown development in American cities. Although
his atrium hotels
eventually gained stature as enduring design icons, recent
interior renovations
have largely ignored the original materiality and civic gravitas

of the unique
“Portman effect.” Drawing awareness to issues surrounding the
renovation of
historically prominent modern architectural interiors, this
chapter critiques con-
textually insensitive renovations in the shopping galleries,
lobbies, and social
spaces of the John Portman originals.
An interior-exterior provenance
In the nineteenth century, the tectonic qualities and material
conditions of com-
mercial arcades blurred city streets into building interiors.
Parisian passages
and other interior urban environments such as the Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele II
(1865) in Milan, Galerias Pacifico (1889) in Buenos Aires, and
the Old Arcade
(1890) in Cleveland served as forerunners of the atrium hotel-
shopping com-
plexes of the mid-twentieth century. The architectural language
of these Euro-
pean and European-inspired interior spaces was appropriated by
John Portman
for his unique interior-exterior aesthetic in America. Analogous
to Lefebvre’s
Marinic, G. (Ed.). (2018). The interior architecture theory
reader. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com
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Gregory Marinic
264

consumption-oriented theory, arcades and Portman atria
extended commercial
space into large urban plots to establish new interior streets for
storefronts and
cafés. Although the historic European passages and American
arcades main-
tain strong interior-exterior readings, Portman’s buildings have
undergone con-
tinual interior renovations which have subverted the original
exterior aspects of
their interior architectural design.
As both architect and developer, Portman’s hotel-retail-
commercial
complexes transformed downtowns into increasingly isolated,
transactional,
and privatized forms of urbanism. These internally focused
projects embraced
a Brutalist aesthetic by appropriating exterior spatial conditions
and materials
to create interior urban experiences.1 Portman addressed the
conventional wis-
doms of various stakeholders – planners, developers, architects,
retailers, and
the public – who sought a substitute form of downtown
urbanism that ignored
the realities of civil unrest, disinvestment, and abandonment. As
American
inner cities shrunk from white flight, his city-within-a-city
concept responded
to increasing uncertainty. Building exteriors were turned
outside-in to create
autonomous internal plazas, encapsulated landscapes, and
hermetic commer-
cial zones.

Beginning in 1967 with the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, Portman
created
bold interior spaces that brought the outdoors inside by
challenging conven-
tional assumptions of the hotel interior.2 Soaring spaces,
building-scale internal
facades, extensive landscaping, lagoons, and exposed concrete
embodied an
interior-exterior aura. As temples of consumerism subjected to
market pres-
sures and changing tastes, his late modernist hotel-retail
interiors were among
the first to be adapted in the postmodern wave. The qualitative
permanence
of these iconic structures – their monumental, austere, and
sublime interior
architecture – has been incrementally diminished and
interiorized by the insen-
sitive actions of corporations, real estate developers, managing
agents, and
professional designers. Focusing on recent adaptive practices,
this chapter cri-
tiques twenty-first-century renovations to the original John
Portman interiors of
the Hyatt Regency Atlanta (1967), Westin Peachtree Plaza
(1976), and Detroit
Renaissance Center (1977).
[Irreverent] dematerialization | Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Hyatt Regency Atlanta is completing the final phase of the $65
mil-
lion transformation that has seen new enhancements made
property-
wide. The renovation positions the landmark downtown hotel as

a
leader in Atlanta, with design changes meeting the needs of
today’s
business travelers and conference attendees.
—– Hyatt Corporation, March 2012
The Hyatt Regency Atlanta forms part of the fourteen-block
Peachtree Center
master plan, which restructured the central core of Atlanta into
an interiorized
downtown environment.3 More than a hotel, Portman created a
substantial
piece of urbanism which contrasted significantly with the racial
fragmen-
tation of the American South in the 1960s. Isolated from the
historic down-
town, the Hyatt Regency was conceived as a district or
neighborhood inside
the Peachtree Center city-within-a-city.4 Portman used cast-in-
place concrete,
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glazed terracotta tiles, extensive landscaping, water features,
and large public
sculptures as urban design elements distributed throughout the
exterior and

interior spaces of the complex. This networked world of
skywalks, tunnels,
arcades, and atria was designed to be weatherproof, convenient,
and safer than
downtown itself.
It is within the original materiality of the Hyatt Regency
Atlanta,
however, where Portman’s ambivalence is most clearly
manifested. The orig-
inal interiors operated more like exteriors, yet external in ways
that did not
appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of the general public.
Brutalist forms and
spatial qualities alluded to utilitarian drainage easements,
expressways, and
social housing – places that were perceived negatively or akin
to public works.
For the adventurous and architecturally sophisticated, Portman
interiors were
sublime and avant-garde, but for many, these grandly scaled
spaces appeared
stark and alienating rather than welcoming and conventionally
luxurious.
By the early 2000s, changing tastes and stylistic trends spawned
continual adaptations to the public areas of the Hyatt Regency
Atlanta. For
example, Portman originally designed a tunneled entrance
experience as a
narrow space that opened into a massive atrium. Although the
space resem-
bled the underside of an expressway flyover, it created an
uncommon spatial
aura. Intentionally low-lit, the original space encouraged guests
to move quickly

through its compressive confines. The main entrance – routinely
criticized for
its understated qualities and lack of a porte-cochère canopy –
was renovated to
more closely resemble conventional four-star hotels. Today, the
uniqueness of
Portman’s original entrance has been replaced with an
expansive glass portal
that undermines the intent of the arrival sequence. In the past, a
dark and sub-
lime space offered a powerful transition to the atrium. Its
concrete surface –
an unfinished material that conveyed interior ambivalence – was
removed and
replaced with smooth marble; bright lighting and new porcelain
flooring further
diminished the original atmosphere to achieve an expectable
aesthetic.
Apart from the renovated tunnel, public areas throughout the
hotel
have been altered to address popular expectations for uniformly
bright and neu-
tral spaces. As evidenced in this post-renovation statement from
Hyatt, aura
has been abandoned in favor of familiarity:
The transformation of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta includes a sig-
nificant refresh of the hotel’s soaring 22-story atrium lobby.
The
entrance area has a clean, open feeling upon arrival with pod-
style
desks providing an intimate and personalized check-in
experience.
Custom art created from brass key fob replicas from the original
Regency Hyatt House embellish the reception area.5

One of the most significant and destructive alterations to the
Hyatt Regency
Atlanta was initiated in 2010 by TVS Design.6 TVS led an
extensive renovation
that removed the white-glazed terracotta flooring in the atrium
and common
areas.7 The original fan-pattern tiles evoked an abstracted
European cobble-
stone street that made the atrium feel both public and urban.
Why was this
critical interior condition replaced with conventional porcelain
tile? Were the
designers unaware of the historical importance of this material
and its spatial
intent? Among the most irreverent departures from the Portman
concept, the
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Gregory Marinic
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new floor disrespects the historical integrity of the original
interior surface.
Furthermore, the scalar and material qualities of the new floor
are incompatible
with the monumental scale of the 22-story atrium. Reorienting
an interior-urban
space into an ordinary interior space, the civic stature of the
Portman original

has been significantly diminished.
While the original interiors of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta
engaged
layers of textural and spatial complexity, it was the lighting
concept that imbued
subtle, nuanced, and otherworldly qualities. In the 2010
renovation, the original
internal exteriority was altered with a new lighting concept that
changed the
type and amount of artificial light, as well as its relationship to
materiality. The
entrance and atrium spaces were brightened substantially, while
the material
palette was lightened.8 The resulting environment no longer
enhances spatial
depth and unseen spaces; these distinctions have been
neutralized and ren-
dered equally. At night, the brightness of the ground plane
detracts from the
ability to perceive the dramatic verticality of the atrium. In
short, this impres-
sive interior urban space no longer appears as monumental as it
once did.
In the original design, materials were coordinated to enhance
their
impact at the scale of the building and the city. In the 2010
renovation, TVS
Design selected materials for their individual qualities instead
of their relevance
to the 1967 concept. Pursuing a safely conventional aesthetic
rather than a
rigorous and integrative approach to architectural interiors, TVS
imposed new
materials that disregard the notable provenance of this iconic

building. Design-
ers ignored the urban tenets of the Portman original. The
monumental atrium
space remains; however, its material articulation and overall
effect have suf-
fered immeasurably.
Apart from materiality and light, various significant
architectural ele-
ments have been removed. From 1967 through the early 1980s,
the atrium
ceiling served as a constructed sky plane surrounded by
balconies that resem-
bled landscaped terraces. Since 2010, hanging vegetation has
been entirely
removed and guest room corridors have been refitted with
conventional pat-
terned carpeting. The overall interior architectural effect has
shifted from
“exterior terraces opening onto the city” to “interior hallways
surrounding a
lightwell.” Furthermore, a pair of monumental hanging follies
that gave scale to
the atrium – a three-story birdcage with parrots and a grandly
scaled, ornamen-
tal parasol – have been dismantled.9 Their removal has altered
the public sen-
sibility of the atrium in favor of a more ordinary hotel lobby
aesthetic. Although
the structural bones of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta remain, the
uniqueness of its
interior urbanity has been largely erased.
[Superficial] adaptation | Westin Peachtree Plaza
In 1976, the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel opened in downtown
Atlanta on a

site formerly occupied by historic theaters.10 Like the Hyatt
Regency Atlanta,
the Westin Peachtree Plaza shares Portman’s urban principles
that appropriate
aspects of traditional street life for the interior. A seventy-story
concrete struc-
ture sheathed entirely in reflective glass is anchored by a
concrete podium
base; glass elevators lead to guest rooms, a revolving
restaurant, and a cocktail
lounge at the summit. Its five-story atrium surrounds a circular
elevator core
with shops, cafés, and restaurants terraced along the eastern and
western
wings of the podium. The Westin Peachtree Plaza, Los Angeles
Bonaventure,
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and Detroit Renaissance Center share similar formal qualities,
yet dissimilar
spatial strategies. Of these, the Westin Peachtree Plaza
embodies the clearest
and most compact spatial organization. The original design of
its atrium podium
employed a design strategy similar to the Los Angeles
Bonaventure (1976) and
Detroit Renaissance Center (1977). Rough concrete formed the

backdrop for a
dream-like indoor space with a lobby lagoon and cocktail
lounge “lily pads” set
within the lagoon or cantilevered above the central space. In the
original design,
vegetation and hanging “rain beads” softened this hard-edged
space, yet the
interior was criticized by the public for being both unfriendly
and austere.
In 1986, the lobby lagoon was unceremoniously drained and the
base-level cocktail lounge lily pads were removed to make way
for postmod-
ern follies designed by John Portman himself.11 Described by
his publicists
as “modern interpretations of a classic Venetian piazza,” these
polychromatic
pavilions were reinterpretations of the Tivoli Gardens in
Copenhagen.12 Port-
man’s stage set installations transformed the lobby into a more
difficult space
to navigate and occupy. Although meant to infuse playfulness
and delight, the
follies seemed strangely out of place within the Brutalist
concrete podium;
they quickly collected dust and grew outmoded and worn.
Furthermore, the
notion that John Portman initiated the design and installation of
such work
is quite remarkable, but reveals his hybrid architect/developer
perspective on
interior design. With the postmodern follies, Portman
introduced an alternative
spatial logic that recast the podium base as a context for
temporal interiorities
which addressed conventional preferences and consumerism.

The architectural
language of the 1986 installations embodies the ambiguities of
postmodernism
relative to interior architecture at a hyperscale. In addition to
the postmodern
follies, new restaurants, bars, and shops were introduced into
the overscaled
circulation spaces to facilitate greater financial return. These
renovations dimin-
ished many of the extraordinary interior-exterior conditions and
spatial qualities
in the Westin Peachtree Plaza.
In the early 2000s, the postmodern follies were removed, but
the original lobby lagoon, base-level cocktail pods, and
vegetation were not
restored. Further subverting the exterior qualities of the space,
circulation areas
were carpeted and the exposed concrete structure was painted
light gray. In
doing so, the hard-edged Brutalism and urban characteristics of
the space were
further subdued. Like actual urban space, the early Portman
hotel-shopping
galleries offered voluminous, unarticulated, and unusable
spaces. A maze of
terrains vagues, these spatial gratuities have been reduced to
minimums in
the reprogramming of the Westin Peachtree Plaza. Today, there
is very little
terrain vague left to critique in the Portman hotels; the interior
complexities and
expansiveness of the podium have been value-engineered into
leasable space.
[Radical] intervention | Detroit Renaissance Center

In 1970, Henry Ford II and the Ford Motor Company formed a
coalition with
other business leaders to initiate Detroit Renaissance, a non-
profit organization
focused on generating economic revitalization in the city.13 The
group announced
the development of Renaissance Center and its construction
commenced in
1971. The hotel tower of the Renaissance Center opened in 1977
as the Westin
Detroit Plaza Hotel and became the tallest all-hotel skyscraper
in the world.14
Although the hotel and office towers were encased entirely in
reflective glass,
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the complex was perceived as an impermeable bunker, blocked
by concrete
berms that visually and psychologically separated it from
downtown. Portman’s
original design for the Renaissance Center created hermetically
enclosed and
secure interior spaces. Harshly criticized, these spaces were
later reconfigured
to connect with exterior spaces and the waterfront.
John Portman’s urban redevelopment projects, including the

Atlanta
Peachtree Center, San Francisco Embarcadero Center, Los
Angeles Bonaven-
ture, and Detroit Renaissance Center, have been deemed too big
to fail. While
they have never been abandoned, each has required intensive
modifications to
remain economically viable. The Brutalist spirit of the
Renaissance Center has
been unable to withstand the forces of time, trend, financial
performance, and
consumer preference. Viewed from the standpoint of historic
preservation, var-
ious interventions have attempted to reform its monolithic
qualities, yet these
renovations have resulted in a radically transformed structure.
Changing market
forces have played a significant role in the elimination of
generous circulation
areas and civic interior scale; some of these changes have been
positive for
Renaissance Center. Today, its shopping galleries receive more
natural light,
spaces are easier to navigate, retail areas open onto the
riverfront, and the
complex activates outdoor street life. Even so, many of these
adaptations have
created interior spaces that lack the avant-garde qualities of the
original John
Portman interior design.
Since opening in 1977, the Renaissance Center shopping
galleries
have suffered from poor retail sales, high turnover, and
extended vacancies.
Although the complex is sited on the Detroit River overlooking

Windsor, Can-
ada, the original design turned its back on both downtown
Detroit and the
international waterfront. In 2001, after more than two decades
of criticism and
falling retail revenues, the General Motors Wintergarden atrium
was unveiled.15
Designed by SOM, the atrium added significant square footage
and a direct
connection to the international riverfront. Although the
Wintergarden has been
applauded for activating street life, the retail galleries of the
Renaissance Cen-
ter continue to suffer from high vacancies.16
Whether configured along streets or shopping galleries, retail is
most successful when designed in frontally opposing sides;
double-loaded
retail offers higher return than single-loaded retail.17 In the
original design, John
Portman used monolithic concrete ramps, stairways, and
guardrails as formal
elements, while most retail spaces were single-loaded with
views of the lobby
lagoon, cocktail pods, and central core. Retail was dispersed
evenly around the
periphery of the podium base and lacked critical density.
Likewise, the visually
impermeable concrete ramps, stairs, and core obstructed sight
lines across
the complex. Although spatially complex and visually bold,
these circulation
armatures created dark interior spaces that were at once difficult
to navigate
and challenging for retailers. Once inside the Renaissance
Center, visitors were

spatially disoriented and unable to find the shops. Portman’s
desire to privilege
social spaces instead of revenue generators made RenCen’s
podium base dif-
ficult to lease. Retail spaces were not designed for optimum
financial gain, but
tuned to his utopian architectural concept. Lobbies were
envisioned as piazzas
and corridors were conceived as streets; their generous scale
gave the complex
a sense of spaciousness, well-being, and grand interior
urbanism. Addressing
spatial confusion in the interior spaces, SOM introduced a
glass-ring mezzanine
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walkway in the 2004 renovation.18 This handsome feature
dematerialized one
of the most obtrusive aspects of the Renaissance Center base
podium design.
Replacing a maze-like pattern of movement, the glass-ring
mezzanine walkway
has improved lighting and sight lines. Its design is sympathetic
to the original
design and provides an impressive, stylistically appropriate
architectural ele-
ment set within the concrete podium context.

One of the most significant departures from the original
Portman
design of the Renaissance Center has been the rebranding of the
complex
by the General Motors Corporation. In 1996, GM acquired the
Renaissance
Center and began an extensive program of exterior and interior
renovations.19
GM renamed the complex, drained the lagoon, removed public
amenities,
and introduced a promotional automotive exhibition.
Reconceived as the
GM Renaissance Center, the company began reprogramming the
grandly
scaled circulation spaces into a promotional showroom for GM
vehicles. One
of the first interventions was the removal of the concrete berms
that sepa-
rated the Renaissance Center from the rest of downtown Detroit,
followed
later with the Wintergarden, the glass-ring mezzanine, and
several repurposed
lobby-exhibition spaces. In a dramatic turn from landscaped
water garden oasis
to GM-branded exhibition, the podium base lobby was drained
and vegetation
removed. It its place – yet ironically appropriate for Detroit – a
showroom of
American-made GM cars and trucks stands permanently on
guard. The year-
round conservatory of trees, water, and filtered light envisioned
by Portman in
the early 1970s has given way to a glorified parking lot.
The efforts to make RenCen’s voluminous spaces economically

via-
ble has resulted in highly compromised interior architectural
qualities. Although
the most recent renovations have carved out economic viability
in place of
spatial gratuitousness, they have largely erased the last traces of
civic gravitas
in the Renaissance Center. While RenCen has been deemed too
big to fail,
its investors have responded by adapting interiors that have
suffered immea-
surably in their continual transformation. While embracing the
larger city and
increasing revenue, the interior glories of the Renaissance
Center have been
largely lost to memory. Today, the Renaissance Center remains
activated and
vital, but embodies a far less civic environment in its corporate
reincarnation.
The public reading of circulation spaces has been diminished by
the extensive
branding program – interior circulation spaces feel like a three-
dimensional GM
advertisement – rather than the interior urban spaces that they
were designed
to be.
The Portman originals through the lens of Lefebvre,
Baudrillard, and Jameson
Since opening in late 1960s and through the mid-1970s, the
John Portman
originals have been roundly criticized for their arrogance to
cities, formal objec-
tification, and fortress-like singularity. As generators of interior
urbanism and
forums for the guilty pleasures of consumerism, these

complexes attempted
to renew American cities by means of interior urbanity.
Blending real estate
development and architectural production with consumption,
Portman suc-
cessfully married his social ambitions to several mega-scale
projects that were
ultimately deemed too big to fail. His legacy stood apart from
reigning para-
digms to ultimately assert a longer-term influence, merging
consumption and
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Gregory Marinic
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commercialization with urban revitalization. It is, however,
within an embrace
of consumerism and trend that Portman’s projects are beginning
to lose their
fantastical internal qualities. As evidenced in these case studies,
the Port-
man originals have been continually undermined by shifting
stylistic and con-
sumer preferences, as well as the destructive practices of
insensitive interior
renovations.
Although the Portman originals can only remain economically
viable

and resilient through their continual redesign, they were
originally conceived
as alternative images of the city and hermetic interior worlds.
These projects
embodied a utopian social experiment paired with the hedonistic
pleasures
of consumption and desire. Although the Westin Peachtree
Plaza exudes a
sophisticated spatial postmodernity, its emergence at the end of
late mod-
ernism paralleled emerging postmodern forces in popular
culture reinforced
by capitalistic impulses in politics, art, architecture, and design.
As evidenced
in the 1986 renovation of the Westin Peachtree Plaza, the
postmodern reno-
vations contradicted the most salient aspects of the original
design aesthetic.
Here, Portman himself used a symbolic understanding of
postmodernism as
a stage set intervention. In this sense, the follies embraced
postmodernity as
fashion in the form of consumer kitsch. After only a few years,
however, the
banal and vulgar follies proved to be a temporary intervention
which met their
own demise.
Acknowledging the dynamic nature of building occupancies,
theo-
rists Henri Lefebvre, Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric Jameson
assert that techno-
logically advanced societies no longer produce spaces that are
entirely organic.
Spaces are increasingly commodified to serve consumption;
they as act as

collectors of things. In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre
defines space
as a commodity directly linked to production and capital.20 He
further identifies
three spatial subcategories that include “abstract space,”
responding to politi-
cal and economic forces; “absolute space,” created by everyday,
participatory
actions; and “differential space,” mobilized by resistant forces
existing within
absolute space.21 Lefebvre situates his theoretical argument
primarily within
cities and the public realm; however, his postulations are
particularly well suited
to the urban-scale renovated interiors of Portman hotels.
Lefebvre’s notion of
differential space relates to the dynamic relationships among
shifting physical
conditions, material assemblies, spatial occupancies, and
interior-exterior con-
ditions in Portman’s work.
French theorist Jean Baudrillard identified the World Trade
Center,
Centre Pompidou, and John Portman’s Los Angeles Bonaventure
– cousins
of the Westin Peachtree Plaza and Detroit Renaissance Center –
as crucial
buildings revealing the cultural logic of modernity and
postmodernity.22 Bau-
drillard’s observations were rooted in the post-structuralist
conviction that
meaning is brought about through systems of signs working in
unison. These
systems are underscored by his analysis and critique of radical
shifts operating

simultaneously within both global architecture and popular
culture. Baudrillard
assessed the hyperspaces of the Bonaventure as an unintentional
parody of
modernism related to an arbitrary and misleading spatial
language.23 Both
Jameson and Baudrillard conclude that it is the subversive
nature of modern
parody that positions the Bonaventure within the postmodern.24
For Baudril-
lard, the modernist parody represents a dialectic relationship
between what
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271
is considered acceptable with regard to universal norms, while
being influ-
enced by subjective aesthetic preferences. Acknowledging his
perspective
on the death of the subject through enslavement to mass media,
as well
as Michel Foucault’s critique of subjectivity, the spatial
freedom of the John
Portman original interiors reveals the end of style and a return
to something
more coded and intuitive.25
In the Los Angeles Bonaventure, Baudrillard lauds Portman’s

abil-
ity to create an ideal inner world which replicates the city
within a building.26
Similarly, the Detroit Renaissance Center isolates itself to
create an even
more powerful and autonomous interior world – a micro-world.
This isolation is
heightened by the obscurity and insignificance of its entrances,
as if to say that
the space within aspired to inaccessibility from the city beyond.
The imperme-
ability of the Detroit Renaissance Center at ground level is
revealed in its lack of
a central and hierarchically significant primary entrance. Its
five towers emerge
from a hulking concrete podium, yet the original pedestrian
connections to the
interior world were underscaled and discrete. Here, modernity
marks a vio-
lent insertion into the city by coding its superiority as
indifference. The subtle
way, however, that it connects interiority with downtown
Detroit and beyond
reveals the influence of postmodernity. The reflective glass skin
turns its exte-
rior surface into a mirror of the urban context. Further
dislocating the complex
within the city as if to dematerialize it, the interior space has no
exterior, no
“definitive” exterior. In turn, this lack of a definable exteriority
underscores the
subliminal reading and primacy of the interior. Although the
renovations sought
to adapt this relationship, the monumental internal civic spaces
of RenCen are
meant to be experienced from within, rather than engaged as an

integral part
of the city. Thus, the podium base of the Detroit Renaissance
Center spatializes
Baudrillard’s theory of consumption, ambiguity, and
postmodernity envisioned
in his seminal book, The Consumer Society: Myths and
Structures, originally
published in 1970.27
Jameson suggests that John Portman’s projects offer spaces
which
reflect postmodern societal norms. As a Marxist cultural
theorist, Jameson has
been instrumental in advancing postmodern architectural
theory.28 He claims
that a “new world of multinational capital” assumes an
“impossible” repre-
sentation in the interior hyperspaces of the John Portman
megastructures.29
However, moving beyond its impact as a hermetic hyperspace,
the renovated
complex acts as a metaphor for our increasingly fragmented
society, the con-
tentiousness of the building-oriented design disciplines, and
even more for the
American city. In his 1984 criticism of John Portman’s work,
Postmodernism,
or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson asserts that
in uncritical,
media-enslaved societies the possibility for pastiche thrives.30
This postmodern
spatial pastiche reflects a media-dominated culture whose
citizenry lack subjec-
tivity and the desire for high art. Claiming that capitalism and
consumer com-
modification have destroyed the ability for contemporary

culture to innovate,
Jameson further rationalizes that postmodern pastiche is linked
to an inability
to develop new “styles” as they are perceived to have already
been invented.31
Thus, art and the past are endlessly recycled and modernism
becomes merely
a postmodernist code. In this sense, Portman codes his
reflective glass build-
ing envelopes for the Westin Peachtree Plaza and Detroit
Renaissance Cen-
ter as “modern,” while simultaneously experimenting with
interior spatial
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Gregory Marinic
272
postmodernity. This skin serves as a tenuous boundary between
an ordered
external architecture and the ongoing aesthetic chaos of its
renovated interior
spaces.
Jameson further explains the public desire for nostalgia and an
obsessive reinterpretation of the past through postmodern art
and architec-
ture. The commodification of culture and the increasing vacuum
of a recycled
past has also resulted in what he terms a schizophrenic

disposition within post-
modern space.32 For Jameson, postmodern schizophrenia
derives from a lack
of historicity, or the disappearance of a sense of history due to
postmodern
recycling of the past. He posits that Portman engaged in
postmodern spatiality
well before the overtly literal postmodern follies at the Westin
Peachtree Plaza
in the early 1980s. He asserts that the spatiality of Portman’s
work embodied
the postmodern excesses of a consumptive society blindly
producing pastiche
as a placeholder for high culture. This sensibility may be further
applied to the
temporality of later renovations and the incremental breakdown
of the original
interior architectural design.
Today, Portman hotel interiors are characterized less by the per-
manence of their original interior architecture and more by
temporality and
trend-influenced interior design. The unthoughtful renovations
of the Portman
originals in the early 2000s have not been well documented – or
lamented – or
considered in relation to marketplace pressures alongside the
cyclical nature
of “entertainment” architecture. The theoretical critique of
Portman’s earliest
buildings by Jameson and Baudrillard has long since passed, yet
the adapta-
tion of these structures has not been adequately critiqued
regarding stew-
ardship of their historically significant architectural interiors.
While it may be

somewhat harsh to claim that theses spaces have been entirely
destroyed, as
iconic works of spatial postmodernism, they are certainly fading
away with little
notice or concern. For the most part, the spatial complexities
and terrain vague
ambiguities that so entranced Jameson and Baudrillard no
longer exist in the
iconic John Portman originals.
The spatial theories of Lefebvre and early critiques of
Portman’s work
by Baudrillard and Jameson assert that buildings are often
critiqued most rig-
orously in their original form – whether celebrated or derided –
and changes to
their interior spaces are often forgotten. Building interiors, such
as the Portman
originals, allow social processes to be manifested, observed,
and reconfigured.
Accordingly, the interior renovations and manipulations of
significant works of
interior architecture should form part of the most vocal
discourse of design
theory and criticism in the field. The critique of the renovated
Portman originals
has, for the most part, ground to a halt. Or have the critics
simply not noticed
that these iconic interior spaces have been nearly erased?
Notes
1 Paul Goldberger, John Portman: Art and Architecture
(Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2009).
2 Ibid.

3 William Neill, Urban Planning and Cultural Identity (London:
Routledge, 2003).
4 Ibid.
5 Hyatt Corporation, Press Release, May 2011. Lucinda Press,
ASID, Senior Associate/Design Coor-
dinator for the Atlanta renovation, TVS design.
6 Hotel News Resource, Press Release, 26 March 2012. Hyatt
Regency Atlanta Debuts $65 Million
Transformation, www.hotelnewsresource.com/article62229.html
(accessed 12 January 2016).
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http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article62229.html
273
7 Leon Stafford, “No More Retro for Iconic Hyatt Regency”,
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 20
August 2010.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.

10 Daniel Niemeyer, 1950s American Style: A Reference Guide
(New York: Lulu Publishing, 2013).
11 Westin Corporation, Press Release, Atlanta’s Icon: The
Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, www.
westinpeachtreeplazaatlanta.com/hotel-history (accessed 12
January 2016).
12 Office of John Portman and Associates, Press Release, 1986.
13 Katherine Mattingly Meyer and Martin C.P. McElroy,
Detroit Architecture: AIA Guide Revised Edi-
tion (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980).
14 Buildings of Detroit, GM Renaissance Center, 2016,
http://criticaldetroit.org/buildings/gm-renais
sance-center/ (accessed 12 January 2016).
15 Metropolitan Affairs Commission, Building the Riverfront
Greenway: The State of Greenway
Investments Along the Detroit River (Detroit: Metropolitan
Affairs Commission, 2001).
16 Ibid.
17 Collin Anderson, Evolution of a Retail Streetscape: DP
Architects on Orchard Road (Singapore:
Images Publishing, 2013).
18 Sherri Welch, “GM to Launch Major Renovation of
Renaissance Center HQ This Summer”, Auto-

motive News, January 2016.
19 Robin Meredith, “GM Buys A Landmark of Detroit for Its
Home”, The New York Times, 17
May 1996.
20 Lefebvre, The Production of Space.
21 Ibid.
22 Mike Gane, Baudrillard’s Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture
(London: Routledge, 2002).
23 See The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed.
Hal Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay
Press, 1985); republished as Postmodern Culture (London,
1985).
24 See Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century
Dialectical Theories of Literature (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 34. Despite
describing the difference between
postmodern pastiche and modern parody, Jameson’s
“Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism”, also links the origins of pastiche to Thomas
Mann and Adorno.
25 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra et Simulation (Paris: Editions
Galilee, 1981).

26 Ibid.
27 Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and
Structures (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publi-
cations, 1998).
28 Perry Anderson, “Forward”, in The Cultural Turn, ed.
Fredric Jameson (London: Verso, 1998),
pp. xi–xiv.
29 Ibid.
30 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1984).
31 Ibid.
32 Fredric Jameson, “Culture and Finance Capital”, in The
Cultural Turn, 1996 ed., ed. Fredric
Jameson (London: Verso, 1998).
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http://www.westinpeachtreeplazaatlanta.com/hotel-history
http://www.westinpeachtreeplazaatlanta.com/hotel-history
http://criticaldetroit.org/buildings/gm-renaissance-center/
http://criticaldetroit.org/buildings/gm-renaissance-center/

Jodi Larson
Hearts and minds and dishwashers
Chapter 47
Hearts and minds
and dishwashers
Jodi Larson
In 1959, leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States, two
world super-
powers locked in a Cold War, held an informal debate. The
debate is taught
in history courses, written about by scholars, and was about the
global poli-
cies and techno-politics of . . . the kitchen. Dubbed the “kitchen
debate,” this
friendly pop-culture battle on the world stage was the
culmination of decades
of machinations that used the discipline of interior architecture
as a means to
debate not just modern living, but life as we know it. Interior
architecture, often
labeled a new discipline, was in fact the tool of choice in
fighting for philosoph-
ical dominance in the Cold War. While design as a whole has
always been key
to social and political maneuvers, the post-WWII years focused
specifically on
the design of home interiorities and the layout of space and
infrastructure in
the domestic arena. It was interior architecture that was chosen
as the way to
the hearts and minds of Cold War participants. The “kitchen
debate” did not

became an iconic showdown of world power on its own.
Reshaping the home
and its interiors had been a constant theme throughout the
twentieth century,
with American Taylorism meeting German Wohnkultur
(dwelling culture), and
produced such results as the Frankfurt Kitchen (1926).1 After
World War II, how-
ever, design collaboration became design competition.
By 1948, while Germany still struggled with consumption at the
most
basic levels of food and shelter, the U.S. State Department
responded to Soviet
propaganda in Germany against the “American way of life” with
some counter
propaganda of its own, emphasizing living standards and
suggesting that Europe
“try it our way.” The Office of the Military Government in U.S.
occupied Germany
(OMGUS) busied itself with the planning of a design exposition
of American hous-
ing trends. Opening in 1949 in Berlin, So Wohnt Amerika (How
America Lives)
presented eight scale models and 150 display panels featuring
designs and pho-
tographs from architecture schools at Harvard, Columbia, and
MIT (featuring, of
course, designers and architects who had been heavily
influenced by European
design and institutions such as the Bauhaus).2 As a series of
Cold War crises
erupted in the late 1940s around the Marshall Plan and the
European Recovery
Program, how America lived became a weapon in the war of
domestic space.

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Jodi Larson
408
Berlin was again the ground zero of these consumption wars in
1950
as the America at Home exhibit debuted at West Berlin’s annual
German Indus-
trial Exhibition (and just as a national election was happening
in East Berlin).
Among other exhibits, a prefabricated suburban home shipped
from Minne-
apolis was constructed by carpenters working around the clock.
The resulting
home, complete with carport, embodied the American promise
that citizens
benefitted more by supporting innovations than by pushing
against them. John
McCloy, the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, responded
to the exhibit
by calling it a living monument. An internal government memo
praised it as a
“patriotic reaffirmation of our way of life” and a symbol of a
“struggle as vital
to the peace and prosperity of the world as any military
campaign in history.”3
A similar exhibition a few years later, at the 1952 German
Indus-

trial Exhibition, again pitted two political systems against one
another by using
interiorities. U.S. State Department documents clearly delineate
“consumer
goods designed to raise the standard of living” as the primary
directive of the
unified display in order to have the maximum effect on the
average East Ger-
man visitors. The title chosen for that year was We’re Building
a Better Life. This
optimistic statement echoed the East German productivity
slogan of “Produce
More – Live Better.”4 Each of these optimistic titles strove to
convince the pub-
lic that a certain political and economic system of household
consumption and
design was the right way to achieve a higher standard of living.
At some level, both industrial design and interior architecture
were
seen as a way to charm consumers into choosing which
economic and politi-
cal system to align with. Governmental policy, however, went
even farther. In
the United States, interior architecture was used to set official
civil defense
policy during the early decades of the Cold War. In 1951, the
U.S government
officially formed the Federal Civil Defense Administration
(FCDA) in response
to the Atomic Age. Immediately, this organization began to
militarize the Amer-
ican home and the families that dwelled in them under the guise
of anti-war
safety. Civil defense planner John Bradley wrote a memo to his
superiors that

equated the possibility of a nuclear bombing to recent winter
storms, asking
“how self-sufficient would the average urban home be following
as atomic
attack?”5 This simplistic view of an atomic attack paved the
way for American
homes to be judged and politicized as agents of patriotism and
survival.
On that front, FCDA administrator Katherine Graham Howard
also
espoused a homeward-looking strategy and helped to develop
official policy
that centered on the nuclear family’s own home and actions to
survive a bomb-
ing attack. She helped to draft policy that, by 1954, led
Americans to believe
that keeping their own homes safe and then returning to those
homes within
a few days of a blast was the most effective way to maintain
lives and soci-
ety.6 Perhaps the most repeated images of this campaign were
those of the
1953 Operation Doorstep. Ostensibly to test structures and food
products in
the event of nuclear exposure, “Operation Doorstep” staged, in
the Nevada
desert, a family of mannequins in a variety of interior rooms,
interacting with
interior space in a variety of activities. Mannequin families that
did not adhere
to FDCA guidelines appeared in the resultant photographs in a
jumble of parts
amid the chaos of a messy home (Figure 47.1). Going further,
the FDCA created
a film titled The House in the Middle, in which the very homes

these manne-
quin families lived in were put on nuclear trial. The three
houses were filmed
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409
as a nuclear bomb test was carried out in the nearby desert
(Figure 47.2). The
house in the middle survived the blast (or was the least
damaged). The houses
not in the middle were shown to be unmodern and ill-kept by
their occupants,
positing that a modern (and neatly kept) home with modernized
infrastructure
could save lives.7 The official government policy on the Cold
War was clear:
your home and how you live matters. Modern living was
officially drafted as
patriotism.
With a decade and a half of exhibition and policy, it is no
surprise,
then, that the meeting between Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev and U.S.
Vice President Richard Nixon that became forever known as the
“kitchen
debate” became the iconic flashpoint that thrust interior
architecture further

onto the world stage. Each country represented a large swatch
of the world
and each evangelized its economic model and political backing
of that model as
an essential ingredient to the good life. Whether that good life
was borne from
Figure 47.1 In Operation
Doorstep, a family of
mannequins helps
to demonstrate how
some behaviors and
housekeeping practices
contributed to civil
defense and survival
rates in the face of an
atomic attack. At the
top of the photo, dinner
party guests do not
seek shelter. Below,
the party’s unpatriotic
behavior leaves the scene
a shambles. 1953.
Image credit: author
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Jodi Larson
410
socialism or capitalism came down to an informal series of

comments in the
kitchen of a model home. The “kitchen debate” wasn’t
necessarily planned as
a debate at all. The 1959 American National Exhibition in
Moscow’s Sokolniki
Park was another of the design exhibitions that had become an
annual showing
in countries with a large stake in the Cold War. In this iteration,
multiple home
interiors, kitchens, and floor plans were shown. In Sokolniki
Park’s suburban
setting, the exterior context was set for a much anticipated six-
week extrava-
ganza of cultural exchange. Soviet visitors were ushered into an
entrance pavil-
ion with large screens showing the abundant American way of
life. Then came
50,000 square feet of floor-to-ceiling consumer goods in what
one historian
called a “combat of commodities.”8 It was, however, kitchens
that dominated
the show. One RCA/Whirlpool kitchen was populated by labor-
saving technol-
ogy and push-button ease, including a floor-cleaning robot and
little need for
the cook to even rise from a chair. Another showcased
convenience foods and
demonstrations of ready-made cake mixes with representatives
from large
American food conglomerates. An up-to-date apartment interior
provided a rare
glimpse into a non-suburban interior. The big finish, however,
was an entire
prefabricated suburban home bifurcated with a ten-foot aisle
through which
millions of visitors would pass in a mass consumption of, well,

consumption.
The prefab home with its middle passage was dubbed “Splitnik”
in reference to the Soviet satellite Sputnik that had pushed the
Soviet Union
to the forefront of the space race. The ranch-style home was
replete with
the American infrastructure that marked the middle class: a
dishwasher, a
combination freezer and refrigerator, a garbage disposal, and a
countertop
cooking range. Very little is ever mentioned of the other rooms
of “Splitnik”; it
is the kitchen that is dissected. It is into this sunny, bright
yellow kitchen that
Vice President Nixon pulled Premier Khrushchev close and
said, “I want to
show you this kitchen.” The exchange that followed was the
climax of interior
architecture’s role in the Cold War, and was often dubbed a
turning point in the
Cold War.
Figure 47 2 This film still
from The House in the
Middle is the shame-
ful house (not in the
middle) that was ill-kept
and unmodernized. The
message was clear that
a family that did not
subscribe to the trappings
of modernism and of
modern life was an unpa-
triotic threat to the safety
of all. Later in the film, a

nuclear test blast set this
supposed eyesore on fire
whereas the house in
the middle, well-kept and
modern, survived with
minor fire damage. 1954.
Produced by the Federal
Civil Defense Adminis-
tration & the National
Clean-Up-Paint-Up-Fix-up
Bureau. U.S. Archives.
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The exchange, despite the name history has given it, was hardly
a debate. It was a series of remarks, perhaps even a series of
barbs and
witty rejoinders. It was entirely informal except for the
presence of a horde
of media and interpreters. Taking place during a brief thaw in
the Cold War,
the lost-in-translation humor and jibes lend the entire affair an
awkward joking
air. While no comprehensive transcription exists of all that was
said between
the two leaders (audio and television cameras did not record
every part of the
mobile exchange), the discussion of the interiorities of Splitnik

and all it entailed
was to offer, at several points, strong connections between
domestic home
infrastructure and world conflict. To a modern scholar, the way
in which food
and domestic labor was connected to the home’s interiors and
then to world
peace seems surreal. At the time, however, when the food
politics of agricul-
ture, airlifts, and post-WWII price control of food and farm
commodities were
still hot topics, the kitchen was, perhaps, the exact right place
to exchange
ideas on the interiorities of two rivaling political and economic
ways of living
and governing.9
Khrushchev turned the United States’ ban on shipping strategic
goods to the Soviet Union into a barb about the United States
inability to trade
now that it has grown older (and presumably lazier about such
things). Khrush-
chev called for the U.S. to seek some trade “invigoration.”
Consumer goods
and interior amenities were quickly turned into a political
gambit. Nixon later
tried to compare the two countries’ technological advancement,
conceding the
Soviet domination of the Space Race by saying,
There may be some instances where you may be ahead of us, for
example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the
investigation of outer space; there may be some instances in
which
we are ahead of you – in color television, for instance.10

The almost hilarious comparison of color TV to rocketry
hammers
home the idea that consumer goods and the home interiorities in
which they
were couched were viewed as equally important to the cold-
warring nations.
Throughout the stilted staccato exchange in the bright yellow
prefab
kitchen, each leader attempted periodically to steer conversation
to lighter top-
ics or more serious topics in turn, depending on how ready or
willing they were
to speak extemporaneously in a given area. Nixon’s invitation
to see a typical
“California” kitchen (his home state) seemed to hover on the
fence of seri-
ous. On the surface, Nixon wanted to point out that labor-saving
devices (mere
“gadgets” according to Khrushchev) had become a standard,
built-in facet of
the average home’s infrastructure. Taking it a step further,
Nixon then wanted to
highlight the role that these so-called gadgets held in liberating
the housewife
from home-slavery. Khrushchev wasted no time in refuting that
idea and bring-
ing his comments back to a dishwasher-to-dishwasher
comparison.
The discussion of gadgetry, then, quickly morphed into an
applied
example of economic models using the typical home as a
starting point.
Khrushchev pointed out that “we have such things” when Nixon
insisted that

the built-in technology was a highlight. Khrushchev pointed out
that the Soviet
Union did not support a “capitalist view of our women.”11 The
subsequent mac-
roeconomics lesson was not about gadgets and comfort, per se,
but used the
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Jodi Larson
412
home’s interiorities as a starting point for a detailed comparison
of income,
personal choice, quality of life, and consumerism, noting
workers’ salaries,
industrialization, and how all of these facets were different or
similar under
capitalism and socialism. As the two men leaned over the
exhibit rail of a mod-
ern kitchen of tomorrow, they were in fact speaking frankly
about the actual
results of each grandiose economic model and how it would
trickle down into
the dishwashers and bedrooms of an average family.12
This, in short, is the meat of the “kitchen debate.” It was never
really about consumer goods at all, but instead about the
economic systems
that governed and manipulated the acquisition of those
consumer goods. It

also emphasized that the home and its interiorities were at the
heart of every
discussion about the superiority of either of these systems. In
the “kitchen
debate,” the world finally saw the top leadership of the great
nations discussing
their lives and their homes. The idea of the home interior, both
as an abstract
achievement of middle class and the tangible ownership of
goods and appli-
ances, was instrumental in the waging of the Cold War.
Interior architecture is often touted as an emerging discipline,
but in
a sense it has been at the forefront of scholarly debates
throughout at least the
twentieth century. In the early decades of the Cold War,
interiorities became
the best-used and most often deployed tool for both explaining
and waging
the Cold War through consumerism and applied economics.
Interior architec-
ture, before being recognized as a discrete scholarship, was
responsible for the
grunt work of winning the hearts and minds of the people in a
battle of global
politics that affected much of the life we live today. Given the
power that inte-
rior architecture wields in everyday life, it has been
instrumental in familiarizing
people with political and economic strategies and in swaying
public opinion. In
the Cold War, this meant that home infrastructure was the
linchpin of whether
free-choice capitalism or a more state-controlled home design
system resulted

in a better quality of life – and a better nation. In the present,
interior architec-
ture is still doing the grunt work of familiarizing and swaying
opinion through
interiorities. Important issues of building reuse, space
conservation, and his-
toric preservation are being addressed through a so-called
emerging discipline
that has been down this road before.
Notes
1 Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power
of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. 9.
2 Ruth Oldenzeil and Karin Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen:
Americanization, Technology, and Euro-
pean Users (Cambridge, MA: Mass. Institute of Technology,
2009), p. 38.
3 Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front, p. 26.
4 Ibid., p. 61.
5 Laura McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home:
Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 11.
6 Ibid., p. 4, 48.
7 Ibid., p. 85.
8 Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 2nd ed.

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1996).
9 The political importance of agriculture and food came to a
head just five years later as the Soviet
Union’s crop productions fell short and the U.S.S.R. was forced
to ask permission to buy Ameri-
can grain.
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10 “The Two Worlds – a Day Long Debate”, New York Times,
25 July 1959.
11 Ibid.
12 Throughout the debate, both leaders had occasion to call out
the other on exactly what was
meant by “average” when speaking of the average family and an
average income. Actual num-
bers were bandied about with several examples, but it can be
assumed that the actual figures

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