For the Public Interiority Exhibit, designers and artists addressed the intersections between experience-based interiority and the city. The exhibit explored human-scaled, adaptable, and phenomenologically-driven places—encouraging inhabitants to renegotiate and reassemble space beyond the confines of property, enclosure, and permanence.

It is critical to the progression of the interior architecture field and to contemporary culture that we explore settings where transient, user-generated conditions can play out in the urban realm. Increasing designer expertise in experiential public space enables us to establish frameworks for spatial rights, significance, and subjectivity.

The works in this exhibit intend to articulate phenomenological prospects related to contemporary interiorities. They represent multidisciplinary and experimental approaches to design, advocating for interiority as the nexus of space, making, and perception.


The Art + Architecture Building at the University of Tennessee has moments of 'interior extension' and perhaps the most intriguing moment is the sunken sculpture garden accessible through the Ewing Gallery, invisible at street level. As part of the exhibition, we have reinforced this extension with an installation of mylar surfaces that flow from the A+A atrium, through the Ewing Gallery, and into the sculpture garden.

Exhibitors at the Public Interiority Exhibition

  • Bill Willoughby

  • Dan Feinberg

  • Emanuela Bonini Lessing and Lucilla Calogero and students

  • Felicia Dean

  • Jered Sprecher

  • Kendra Ordia

  • Lindsey Krug

  • Lysa Janssen

  • Marcin Kedzior

  • Nathan Smith

  • Nerea Feliz Arrizbalaga and Joyce Hwang

  • Rana Abudayyeh

  • Ria Bravo and students

  • Shai Yeshayahu

  • Stefani Byrd

  • Zahra Safaverdi

  • Central High School Visual Arts Students with Ms. Cheryl Burchett