HISTORY OF CHINESE INTERIOR DESIGN

HISTORY OF CHINESE INTERIOR DESIGN

HISTORY OF CHINESE INTERIOR DESIGN

Much like the history of art, the history of interior design encompasses numerous styles, movements, and individual artistic contributions. It also reflects the influence of international political and social developments. A basic understanding of this history is important for professional designers who look to the past for inspiration.

Review

"Pile delivers a focused and clearly written chronological examination of significant interiors and their associated details." (APT Bulletin, June 2002)

From the Inside Flap

The first major survey text on interior design for over a decade, A History of Interior Design delivers the inside story on 6,000 years of personal and public space. John Pile acknowledges that interior design is a field with unclear boundaries, in which construction, architecture, the arts and crafts, technology, and product design all overlap. These topics are woven together in a fascinating narrative that runs from cave dwellings and temple architecture, through Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance palaces onto the grand civic spaces of the nineteenth century and the sleek interiors of modern sky-scrapers.

Embedded in a social and political context, detailed discussions of famous buildings, from the Parthenon to the Pompidou Center, are interspersed with investigations of the domestic vernacular ? the cottages, farmhouses, apartments, and city terraces inhabited by ordinary people. Primary source quotations are used to provide contemporary perspectives on a wide variety of interior settings.

With 400 illustrations, 200 in color