MODU: Field Guide to Indoor Urbanism

Authored by the interdisciplinary Brooklyn-based design studio MODU, this reader explores the space between the interior and the exterior in architecture. How does the design of interior spaces align with the world “outside,” and vice versa? Where can the boundaries between the interior and the urban be drawn? What role does the environment play in this? Led by Phu Hoang and Rachely Rotem, MODU focuses on the marriage of urbanism and nature in its architectural and interior design projects, leaving behind the binary of inside and outside, and instead understanding architecture as an extension of the environment, imagining a hybrid of urban space, architecture and interior space. For this volume, Hoang and Rotem look to three major cities on different continents—New York, Rome and Tokyo—and consider examples from each of indoor urbanism and architectural climate adaptation.

 
 
Phu Hoang is Head of Architecture section at the Knowlton School of the Ohio State University and the the Robert S. Livesey Professor of Architecture.
Rachely Rotem is a professor at Yale University and Rhode Island School of Design, and has also taught at MIT.