Expanding Interior Design through Humanities

Designing a home that is not a home, but which aspires to be so for a short time, responding to a wide variety of cultural needs, is a difficult challenge, which design could however tackle with essential contributions from the field of humanities. The paper aims to explain the initial results of a study led by a multi-disciplinary group of designers, social workers and environmental psychologists. The research focuses on the quality of Italian centres for refugees. The ephemeral nature of the settlement in the centres and the variety of identities of the tenants due to their multiethnical and multi-identity nature, require tools, processes and knowledge from a wide range of disciplinary contexts. How could design and humanities respond to the cultural diversities implied in this state of living? How could design comprehend the environmental-psychological concept of place-identity [Proshansky, 1978] in temporary places? How could design, starting with a social condition of dis-location and dis-placement [Papadopoulus, 2002], re-place a new location, a new place? Starting with the three main elements of living [Canter, 1974; Vitta, 2008] – bodies, spaces and objects – the study aims to explore how space’s physical qualities could enhance the cultural integration that is promoted in reception centres. The places’ 3 basic elements are expanded into a wider concept of hospitable capability, with the contribution of social and psychological sciences: bodies & privacy vs collective spaces + spaces & attachment vs temporariness + object & personalization vs standardization. This approach aims to answer the need for places which are able to comprehend and open to cultural diversities. The paper surveys a wide range of case studies of hospitable and open-cultural places, in order to outline models for interior design characterized by a humanities-centred approach.