The Australian Indigenous sky dome and its potential to reshape interiority

Abstract

Interiority is a concept that allows interior thinking to move beyond the interior space of the building envelope. It is also appropriate for engaging with built expressions across cultures, because interiority is not tied to western spatial organization. This paper will explore Australian Indigenous space and, in particular, the utopian cosmological model of the “sky dome” as providing an opportunity to extend the concept of interiority for the interior discipline. This paper builds on work undertaken as part of my doctoral research by positioning the sky dome in relation to three key aspects of interiority: scale, boundary, and projection. The sky dome was a cosmological model predominant, particularly in parts of south-east mainland Australia, at the time of European colonization. In this model the sky was thought of as a vault that stretched to the earth, sometimes supported on columns. This paper explores the ways this particular cosmological model can contribute to understandings of interiority. It concludes that the sky dome cosmology has the potential to act as a case study for the interior discipline when exploring the conceptualization of interiority. The cosmology also enables key ideas to be distilled in new ways. The argument draws on anthropological and historical literature but frames the discussion from within the interior architecture/interior design discipline.