Translating across Disciplines: On Coding Interior Architecture Theory to Advance Complex Indoor Environment Quality

While indoor environment quality (IEQ) measurement is an established process, it omits the pleasure of interior environments, possibly due to its perceived subjectivity in the context of objective productivity and profitability. Given the significant commercial interior design industry, which engages with the complexity of indoor habitation, there exists an opportunity to expand the scope of IEQ appraisal through inclusion of the interior architecture discipline as an IEQ stakeholder. This theoretical paper reframes existing building appraisal as convergent methods that are contingent on the discipline and audience, and proposes a sequential mixed methods research process that allows subjective and objective research methods integration. Drawing on the interior architecture discipline, and its holistic ‘interiority’, a content analysis of selected theoretical texts identifies candidate quality components for future development and use in environment quality measurement. The intention of this process is to translate across the interior architecture and architectural science disciplines by coding interior architecture perspectives into possible measurable variables. These broader candidate variables would likely be more inclusive of the lived experience and agency of occupants of interior spaces. Furthermore, they offer the possibility for extended complex indoor environment quality data for future use in advanced statistics