The purpose of the doctoral thesis is to study interior spaces - built in the old tradition of closed and contrasted architecture – relativized in their interior condition. In the classical opacity and the difference between the inside and the outside, we find a different relationship to the so-called "fluid space" of modernity, between the interior and the exterior condition.
The first part approaches a conceptual definition of the topic, understanding the interior-exterior as the construction of an interior and, simultaneously, an exterior experience, of opposite tendency in the intimacy of confinement. Reviewing from the intemperie, that manufactures the intrusion of atmospheric phenomena in the enclosed space, to a more unprejudiced and heterogeneous way of understanding the interior as exterior.
The body of the thesis is divided into three maps (or parts) that grasp the interior-exterior from an independent point of view, studying the treatment of its limits, but with the constraint of always beginning the story in Mediterranean interiors, to continue in Germany, and culminate mainly in the architecture of Nordic neoclassicism in Sweden and Denmark. Together, they make up the observatory proposed by the Thesis, overlapping in a single cartography that follows the reverse orientation left by the displacements of Northern European architects to the classical world.
Within each map, the interiors are ordered according to two simultaneous criteria: firstly, a thematic perspective. And, secondly, a geographical disposition with a northerly direction. The interiors are progressively linked to explain the proposed argument and each interior space presupposes the explanation of the previous one. Moreover, the three maps follow a sequential order, although each one has enough individual nature for non-linear reading.
The first map revisits the maximum exteriority that defines the symbol of contained universal space and the vertical tendency of the enclosure, finding its revelation in the infinite staircase. The second map traces the dome and the tent in the romantic garden, both suspended within traditional roofs, hidden among trees of picturesque outdoor promenades. Finally, the third map explores inductively the things, inventorying elements that, placed inside, relativize the interior and approach the ambiguity of an internal landscape.
The winter climate conditions the architecture of Northern Europe and the need for covering establishes a dialectical relationship with the exterior experience and also with the repetition and interpretation of the admired classical interiors, increasing, by contrast, the exterior condition of its interiors.