The University of Texas at Austin 

School of Architecture 

November 7, 2025    10am-6pm

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The Interior Design Program at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture is hosting the Interior Provocations symposium, in collaboration with Pratt Institute, on Friday, November 7, 2025 . The annual symposium, founded and organized by Pratt Institute faculty in the History of Art and Design and Interior Design Departments, provides a public forum for critical thinking about the design, theory and history of the interior. Comprised of provocative and boundary-expanding presentations by design practitioners, historians, and theorists, Interior Provocations is dedicated to furthering the scholarship of the expanding fields of Interior Design and Interior Design History through mutual collaboration and exchange. 

 

This year’s theme, developed by UT Austin faculty, is WEATHER. The symposium keynote speaker is the Swiss architect Philippe Rahm based in Paris, known globally for his multi-scalar explorations of the built environment in the age of climate change. 

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Weather is a situated state of atmosphere; an atmospheric event marked by place and time. As a term,  atmosphere refers to the gaseous layers that envelop astronomical objects, but more broadly also encompasses mood, vibes, and other similarly spatial and social phenomena. Following such an expanded definition, how might weather similarly stretch beyond meteorology to permeate other facets of living environments, past, present, and future? Furthermore, what can the framing of weather as an unfolding and dynamic yet situationally specific condition reveal about the role that interiors play—or have historically played—in the shaping of both social and ecological atmospheres? 

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What roles and responsibilities do fields engaged in shaping the atmosphere of interiors assume in the age of extreme weather events unfolding across a heating planet?  What do past examples of this illuminate about atmospheric patterns, traditions, metaphors, or mishaps, and how do these relate to our shaping of current interior responses? How do shifting weather patterns signal the urgent need for rethinking interiors and interiority as a composite space that engages multiple forms of life, mixed realities, evolving urbanisms, and emerging material conditions with profound social and environmental consequences? What projections, speculations, and mitigations might be needed in response to impending weather? How do we, in other words, forecast changes in the field’s atmosphere? 

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Keynote Speaker: 

Philippe Rahm | Philippe Rahm Architects | Paris, France

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Symposium Organizers:

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UT Austin:

Ria Bravo

Tara Dudley

Nerea Feliz

Allison Gaskins

Clay Odom

Igor Siddiqui, Chair

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Pratt:

Anca Lasc

Deborah Schneiderman

Keena Suh

Karyn Zieve

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Image credit: Yu-Hsuan Hsieh (BSID '24).