BRIEF

‘Interiors’ is a term that applies to many things: lighting, furniture, accessories, architecture, sets, and so on, but at the heart of our notion of the interior is the inhabitation of given space.

To inhabit a place is to change it - we repaper the walls, move around the furniture, or even throw it out and start again – but we are always dealing with what exists, and this project is designed to give you the basic tools to analyse and understand given spaces.

The tools of inhabitation are light, space, and surface, and we use them in various combinations to transform what we find around us to suit our own purposes. You will be dealing with these three basic terms in this project.

But at the heart of interior design is a problem: design. We cannot just instinctively build interiors – we must imagine them before we have done so, and to this end, we have to ways to imagine them: drawing, modeling, writing, and looking. This project is designed to help you get to grips with the basic tools of the trade of interiors.

The given spaces with which you will be dealing all inhabit a very curious building - The Museum of Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. Also known as Huntly House it is a series of buildings dating from the 16th to 18th century. They are built around one of Edinburgh’s famous closes. The buildings have had many uses and in habitants over the centuries and have survived the many changes on this part of the Royal Mile. By 1851 there were over 300 people living there, from all classes of society. Today it has a very different function. At the start of the 20th century it was bought by the council and turned into the Museum of Edinburgh in the 1930’s. They extended into neighbouring buildings in the 1960’s and it still houses the Museum of Edinburgh to this day.

The building is still a fascinating collection of small interconnecting rooms. Corridors and escapes are challenged by the constraints of the existing building. It houses an extensive collection of items representing the historical and cultural life of Edinburgh from its early beginnings right up to the present day.

It is your job to review how the building currently operates as a museum and how this function inhabits the various rooms and spaces. You should consider the impact of how light, space, and surface are treated within the building and how its historic character and features influence its current use.