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Abstract

Architectural discourse has long privileged space as formally constituted—defined through geometry, enclosure, and typological classification—while its experiential and relational dimensions remain insufficiently examined. This article addresses that gap by proposing a methodological claim: the sequential and cumulative use of analytical drawing enables the investigation of spatial experience in ways that formal analysis and phenomenological description alone cannot achieve. Positioned as an epistemic framework, the research employs drawing not as representation but as a structured mode of inquiry. Five analytical lenses—liminality, permeability, intermingling, ephemerality, and complex interiority—are operationalised through a sequence of drawings that isolate and reconstruct the relational conditions through which interiority emerges. This framework is applied comparatively to two contrasting case studies: Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Robert Zion’s Paley Park. The research-by-drawing process demonstrates that both cases produce interiority through analogous relational operations—extension and compression—which, though formally distinct, reveal a shared spatial logic. In each case, interiority arises from the calibrated interaction of thresholds, atmospheric exchange, and patterns of occupation. The research, thus, redefines urban interiority as a condition generated through relational mechanisms operating across spatial configurations and establishes drawing as a critical method for rendering these dynamics analytically legible.

Publication Date

7-29-2026

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Submitted Date

2025-11-09

Accepted Date

2026-06-15

First Page

253

Last Page

282

Authors' Bio

Sarah Javed Shah
[email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1214-5015

Sarah Javed Shah is an architect, researcher, and Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore, and Founding Director of CUSP—Consortium for Urbanism and Socio-Spatial Practices. She holds a PhD in Architectural Urban and Interior Design from Politecnico di Milano (2025), with a transnational research trajectory across South Asia and Europe. Her research advances a design-driven framework centred on urban interiority, positioning drawing as a critical tool for analysing collective urban space; her work has appeared in Interiority, Sustainability, HERD, and SSM, among others. Her current postdoctoral trajectory, Threshold Urbanism, develops a relational framework for intercultural urbanism through feminist-decolonial perspectives, fostering dialogical reciprocity between the Global South and Global North. A recipient of the MSCA Seal of Excellence (Horizon Europe), she has co-edited academic volumes at Politecnico di Milano, presented at CA²RE/CA²RE+, EURAU, and CIPA, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Architects Pakistan and as a reviewer for Elsevier, MDPI, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE, among others.

Giulia Setti
[email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0361-1598

Giulia Setti is an architect, PhD, and an Assistant Professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, DAStU, Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses on design strategies for the reuse of industrial architecture and on the study of water architecture in India. She participates in the CRAFT project—Competence Centre Anti-Fragile Territories, coordinated by DAStU - Department of Excellence (2023-2027), as a member of the Scientific Board. She is involved in the MOST – National Centre for Sustainable Mobility, within the Spoke1 of the PNRR project, focusing on design strategies for the integration of Urban Air Mobility in cities. In 2014–2015, she carried out research and teaching activities at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India. She has curated the publication Architecture and Sustainability: Matter, Quality, Form (Mimesis, 2025), and she published Stepwell Architecture per l’acqua nel Gujarat (LetteraVentidue, 2022).

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