A history of style and the modern interior: From Alois Riegl to Colin Rowe

Abstract

From a historical perspective, the idea of modern architecture may be seen to coincide with the invention of modern art, and the same may be said of the modern interior. In fact, art, architecture, and interiors have histories that are intertwined, in part, because they bear on the question of style. Since style pertains to an aesthetic sensibility that we tend to associate with a given cultural period, rather than a discipline, the historical provenance of the modern interior cannot be easily separated from the history of its sister fields insofar as it constitutes a predominantly visual, tactile, and phenomenological mode of expression.