The Modern Period Room

by Penny Sparke (Editor), Brenda Martin (Editor)

With contributors drawn from a broad range of disciplines, The Modern Period Room brings together a carefully selected collection of essays to consider the interiors of the modern era and their more recent reconstructions from a variety of different viewpoints. Contributions from leading design historians, architects and curators of the history of the domestic interior in the UK engage with the issues and conventions surrounding the modern period room to expose the conflicting tensions that lie beneath the conceptual and physical strategy of the modern period room's representational technique. Exploring themes and examples by prestigious architects, such as Ernö Goldfinger, Truus Schroeder and Gerrit Rietveld, the authors reveal the specific coding of presented interior spaces. This illustrated new take on the historiography of twentieth century show interiors enables historians and theorists of architecture, design and social history to investigate the contexts in which this representational device has been used.

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2006

About the author

Penelope Anne Sparke is a writer and academic who specializes in the history of design. She is a Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, where she is also Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre.

Sparke received her B.A. in French Literature and her P.G.C.E. in Education from Sussex University, and her Ph.D. in Design History from Brighton Polytechnic.