Transient Domesticity in the Urban Interior

The chapter considers a refurbished Bermondsey Street in London as an interior space where objects of memory are curated into a reconstructed atmosphere of domesticity. I argue that as our experience of the city becomes increasingly transient, our notions of inhabitation shift to a wider and more fragmented context, and our ability to integrate with the urban environment becomes eroded. Bermondsey Street, however, presents a distinctive experience illustrating how phenomena of intimacy and familiarity can converge across space and time to provide a more stable form of inhabitation.

In order to understand how these phenomena occur, and how the experience of the urban interior manifests itself in our consciousness, I follow a phenomenological method of intentionality, whereby the urban interior becomes the intentional object. This phenomenological narrative is illustrated as a meditative journey through images—a recollection of memories of the homely, initiated by the encounter between consciousness and the way the interior animates imagination. Such a phenomenological approach can thereby link past and present in future transient experiences of the urban environment as an interior space.