"Today, a multitude of interiors resemble each other regardless of their location or function. Shopping malls, airports, office lobbies, museums--'continuous' interiors for a mass public--all assume the same characteristics. Such spaces are not simply 'natural' developments, but products of instrumental systems and their explicit and implicit programmes, embodying ideology and pragmatism. The search for their ideas is at the heart of the essays in this book, which describe the processes of urbanisation of the American territory, their effect on place and the evolution of the contemporary public interior."--Back cover.