Abstract
This study investigates the role of interior design in sustainable urban regeneration by examining how the discipline responds to global trends and contributes to the transformation of post-industrial urban environments in South Africa. Focusing on Johannesburg and Cape Town, the research explores how interior design operates not only within building interiors but also across the broader urban fabric to mediate the relationships between architecture, public life, and socio-ecological systems.
Through the conceptual lens of the urban interior, the study reconceptualises interiority as a spatial and relational condition that extends beyond enclosure to structure human experience across the scales of the city. Integrating theoretical frameworks of sustainability, placemaking, and adaptive reuse, the research advances an eclectic understanding of interior design as a discipline of connection, mediation, and transformation; one that is capable of generating urban meaning through material, social, and environmental continuity.
A qualitative, interpretive methodology was employed, which combined case study analysis, site observation, spatial mapping, and semi-structured practitioner interviews. This multi-scalar approach enabled the research to capture both the tangible and intangible dimensions of design-led regeneration and to reveal how interior design fosters a sense of belonging, inclusivity, and ecological responsiveness in contexts marked by inequality and fragmentation. The first-hand investigation focused on adaptive reuse and mixed-use projects, which included key sites such as Victoria Yards, The Maboneng Precinct, and Newtown Precinct in Johannesburg, as well as the Woodstock Exchange and The Fringe Innovation District in Cape Town.
The findings demonstrate that interior design functions as an interface discipline that bridges the architectural, urban, and social realms. The research further demonstrates that the contribution of interior design to sustainable urban regeneration is not autonomous, but is structurally enabled or constrained by broader governance frameworks, ownership models, policy environments, investment priorities, and socio-economic conditions. Consequently, the regenerative capacity of interior design depends not only on design excellence, but also on the institutional, political, and economic structures within which regeneration is conceived, funded, and implemented. Through adaptive reuse, it enacts what the study terms “embedded regeneration”. This is a process in which sustainability is achieved not only through material efficiency but also through the reanimation of cultural memory and urban identity. Interior design’s sensitivity to context and placemaking, tactility, and human experience positions it as uniquely equipped to choreograph this embeddedness and create spaces that reconcile history with innovation and private intervention with public value...