Seeing Double: Reflections on Drawings of an Unbuilt Interior

This illustrated paper reflects on a suite of drawings describing proposals for an unrealised set of low-cost, low-tech, and temporary interior interventions at Croome Court in Worcester. The drawings and the proposed interventions they represent are informed by techniques developed in the eighteenth century, by architects like Robert Adam, during a moment of uncertainty and innovation in the design and representation of interiors. The paper brings often overlooked historical ways of drawing and making interiors to light and demonstrates their potential contemporary utility. It is presented as a series of ‘reflections’, which collectively suggest a latent space of potentiality - between past and present, representation and reality, historical research and design proposition - for imagining interiors.

Each ‘reflection’ explores a perceived ‘doubleness’ or ‘space of contradictions’ inherent in the drawings. The first reflects on the dualistic function of the drawings as both representations of a design proposal and a method of historical research. The second explores how the drawings combine two distinct modes of representation to communicate the experiential and technical aspects of the project. The third highlights the reciprocally conditional relationship between the method of drawing and the design proposal, and the blurring of boundaries between representation and reality that may occur when the act of drawing extends beyond a representational tool to become manifest physically as part of a constructed interior. The fourth reflects on the disjunction between the elaborate representation and ostentatious architectonic expression of the proposed interior and ideas of thrift and material economy that belie its proposed realisation.

The research presented was carried out using a qualitative multi-methods approach whereby qualitative methods from interpretive research – interpretive-historical analysis and visual methods, including wall chart mapping – are used alongside design methods synonymous with architectural practice.