Absence of Structure

In mainstream design practice, the disciplines of interior design and landscape architecture most commonly come together in the context of an architectural project. In a typical project team, the two professions will not readily intersect or overlap as the architecture is always in-between, and although they may consult with each other, the two disciplines may not necessarily collaborate. Collaboration is more than simply teamwork and the necessary consultation that takes place amongst members of a project team. True collaboration between disciplines occurs when practitioners consciously step beyond their professional boundaries and engage in a new process of design that is informed by their collaborators from other professional areas. Focusing on the experiences of the interior design and landscape architecture members of two teams in a recent design competition the paper investigates what can occur when interior and landscape practitioners work together as members of multi-disciplinary team to address a series of design briefs that are not necessarily architectural, but are deliberately open, experimental and address a multitude of scales.