Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Interior design is often understood as a practice concerned with the human body and the enclosed built environment. Yet its theoretical foundations—particularly those centred on inhabitation and environmental perception—offer a productive means of crossing disciplinary boundaries. This paper explores how interior design can operate as a mediating field between the humanities and STEM by foregrounding ecological and relational understandings of space. Drawing on the concept of interiority as a physiological and semiotic condition, I examine how interior design can be extended to consider the lived experiences of nonhuman persons. This is not simply a matter of inclusion or metaphor, but a disciplinary expansion grounded in ecosystemic thinking and a concern for the Other. I argue that interior design, as a field attuned to affective, spatial, and perceptual dimensions, is well positioned to contribute to transdisciplinary education and research. The development of a micro-modular recirculating aquaculture system (MM-RAS), led through an Innovate UK–funded project, is presented as a demonstration of this approach. The project combined spatial design, animal welfare science, environmental engineering, and systems thinking, resulting in a platform for student engagement that moved between embodied design practice, data visualisation, and biosemiotic theory. By applying interior design principles outside the traditional domain of interiors, this paper proposes a model of education in which students learn to engage with complexity through spatial thinking, and to respond to pressing ecological and ethical questions through cross-boundary, materially grounded design practices.