Interior Architecture, Düsseldorf

Interior architecture is often described through style, furnishing or decoration. In reality, it begins much earlier.

Every environment establishes conditions. Proportions, materials, light, acoustics and furnishings influence perception, orientation and action. Interior architecture is therefore not the decoration of rooms, but the design of conditions under which life takes place.

In spatial theory, a distinction can be made between structure and lived space.

Structure describes the physical framework: geometry, materiality, construction and order. Lived space describes the experiential quality of that framework – its atmosphere.

Decisions regarding materials, surfaces, light, furniture and spatial organisation alter the physical setting and thereby influence the atmosphere that emerges from it. Interior architecture operates within this relationship. It connects technical, functional and atmospheric requirements into a coherent spatial condition.

For this reason, every project begins not with a style, but with an investigation of the task itself. How will a space be used? Which actions should it enable? What relationships emerge between people, objects and architecture?

The answers lead to decisions regarding scale, material, light, assembly and use. Design becomes understandable and capable of justification.

Architecture is responsibility — because it remains.

This also applies to interiors. Spaces influence everyday life over many years. They structure routines, encounters, concentration, retreat and communication. Interior architecture carries responsibility for these conditions.

The work of Felix Schwake brings together architecture, interior design and functional art as different scales of the same task:

to create the conditions under which space becomes experience.