Liz Teston

University of Tennessee Affiliated Fellow
June 10–July 5, 2024
Profession
Associate Professor, School of Interior Architecture, College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee
Project title
Public Interiority
Project description

At AAR, I will focus on a Roman case study for my ongoing Public Interiority project. The work investigates exteriors that feel like interiors—the feeling of within, without architecture. This experience can be achieved by designing adaptive urban assemblages, exploring the body and space, and phenomenology. While we frequently experience interiority inside, Public Interiority is shaped by stimuli in the public sphere, like psychologies, atmospheres, forms, politics, and programs. 

The project makes a case for an expanded interiority generated from conditional interiors like the bowl-shaped topography of Circus Maximus. A hill, given enough altitude, becomes a wall. A bridge, coupled with the shadow and the midday sun, creates an interior room. I plan to research Nolli’s eighteenth-century maps of Rome and examine the products of the 1978 Roma Interrotta exhibitions, emphasizing the sector near Palatine Hill. I will also study and document present-day interactions within these surviving spaces, generating contemporary representations of interiority in the Eternal City.