BOOKS
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Mangold, William. 2025. The Interiors Theory Primer. Routledge.
The Interiors Theory Primer introduces readers to key theoretical areas of interior space and experience. Organized into three sections, the book addresses long-standing issues at the core of interiors such as place identity, atmosphere, and materiality; engages disciplinary concerns of taste, status, and media; and looks forward to consider questions of social justice, biophilia, and well-being. Each chapter introduces a specific topic of interiors and presents a succinct review of pertinent scholarship and design precedents.
Project Info | Purchase from Routledge | Purchase from Amazon
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Gieseking, Jen Jack and William Mangold, with Cindi Katz, Setha M. Low, and Susan Saegert, editors. 2014. The People, Place, and Space Reader. Routledge.
The People, Place, and Space Reader is an edited volume of seminal writings from a variety of fields that discuss social, political, and economic aspects of space and place, and consider differences in perception, experience, and practice. The twelve sections cover topics from home to public/private and urban spaces. Essays from the editors introduce the texts and outline key issues surrounding each topic.
BOOK CHAPTERS, JOURNAL ARTICLES, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
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Mangold, William. (2025, forthcoming). “Toward an Integrated Interiors Theory: Articulating Paradigms of Practice and Inquiry.” Journal of Interior Design.
A peer-reviewed article accepted for publication by the Journal of Interior Design that makes a case for interiors theory as a rigorous and necessary framework for design scholarship.
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Mangold, William. 2024. “The Library,” in Part I: Histories and Typologies, The Interior Urbanism Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic. Routledge
A chapter discussing library spaces as part of a continuous urban spatial fabric. It analyzes the civic interior of the New York Public Library, examining how its organization expresses spatial conditions and institutional values.
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Mangold, William. 2014. “Architecture and the Vicissitudes of Capitalism,” in Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty, edited by Benjamin Flowers. Ashgate Press.
This essay examines the complex entanglements between architecture and capitalism, tracing how built form both reflects and reproduces economic systems. It situates architecture within the dynamics of labor, capital, and ideology, while also probing moments where design practices challenge or reconfigure dominant logics. By connecting historical perspectives with contemporary debates, the essay frames architecture not simply as a backdrop to capitalism but as an active participant in shaping its spatial, social, and cultural expressions.
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Mangold, William. (under review). “Understanding Atmosphere: Perception, Expectation, and the Crafting of Experience.” Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture.
An article that theorizes interior atmosphere as a spatial, psychological, and ideological condition.
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Mangold, William. 2025. “Mediating Urban Life: Interiority and Digital-Physical Experience.” Architecture, Media, Politics, Society Journal. ISSN 2398-9467.
A peer-reviewed article studying digital-physical experience and interiority in public space, especially as shaped by screen technologies and thresholds.
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Mangold, William. 2025. “Learning Through Full-Scale, Site-Specific Making: Spatial Engagement Tools for Beginning Design Students” in NCBDS 40 Conference Proceedings, Tool(ing).
An article outlining the pedagogical and spatial insights gained from full-scale speculative interior installations in graduate design studios.
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Mangold, William. 2018. “The Public Eye,” Interiors + Sources, May 2018 issue.
This article explores how social media—particularly Instagram—reshapes the design and experience of public interiors. As spaces increasingly cater to photo opportunities and visual consumption, designers are challenged to consider how atmosphere, materiality, and perspective function in a culture of display. Drawing on critiques of vision’s dominance and examples from contemporary design practice, the essay asks whether “Insta-worthy” environments expand or diminish our engagement with place, and how the blurring of public and private might open possibilities for deeper, more embodied encounters.
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Brack, M., Niemiec, J., Mangold, W., Koltick, N. Jung, U. 2020. “Motley Crews: Learning from Interdisciplinary Design Charrettes” in 108th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, Open.
An article outlining the pedagogical and interdisciplinary design insights gained from hosting a series of student design charrettes. These are collaborative, interdisciplinary events engaging 60–80 students in intensive design sessions addressing speculative and real-world problems. We partner with award-winning firms and community organizations, incorporating participatory methods and cross-disciplinary dialogue to foster creativity, civic awareness, and collaborative problem-solving.
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SpaceTime Research Collective. 2009. “To What Will We Resort When Capitalism is Over” in Human Geography 2:2
This essay, produced by the Spacetime Research Collective, uses Las Vegas as a lens to interrogate the spaces, desires, and contradictions of late capitalism. Moving between ethnographic observation, critical theory, and speculative imagination, it examines casinos, resorts, labor, and everyday survival as microcosms of larger economic and cultural dynamics. The text blends personal narrative and collective reflection to ask how spatial practices both reveal and reproduce capitalist logics—and to wonder, provocatively, what forms of resort, leisure, and social life might remain possible beyond capitalism.
SCHOLARLY WRITING
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Mangold, William. 2025. “Field Guide to Place Analysis.”
A concise, practice-oriented resource for observing, documenting, and interpreting spatial behavior, thresholds, and environmental psychology. Developed over 15 years of teaching and research, the guide offers adaptable methods and prompts that bridge theory and practice in both academic and professional contexts.
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Mangold, William. 2024. “Design and Social Responsibility Readings and Resources.”
A curated, evolving compilation of scholarship addressing equity, ethics, and justice in design. Used in seminars, and thesis projects to inform critical engagement with the social and political dimensions of the built environment.
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Mangold, William, 2023. “Vocabulary of Care and Repair.”
This working document proposes a preliminary vocabulary for thinking about care and repair across art, design, architecture, and social theory. Drawing inspiration from Raymond Williams’ Keywords, it frames language as both inherited and evolving—something to be made conscious, critical, and adaptable. By gathering terms that range from “mend” and “patch” to “reparation” and “transformation,” the project seeks to articulate how practices of maintenance, healing, and renewal shape both material environments and social relations.
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Mangold, William. 2009. “Design Competitions as ‘Political Weapons’: Considering the Role of Van Alen Institute in Architectural Production.”
This paper examines the role of the Van Alen Institute (VAI) within the broader landscape of architectural production, focusing particularly on its use of design competitions as tools for discourse, experimentation, and public engagement. Founded in 1894 and evolving through several institutional forms, VAI has long used competitions to shape architectural education, professional practice, and debates about the public realm. Through a case study of the 2007 Gateway National Recreation Area competition, the paper highlights both the possibilities and limitations of competitions as “political weapons”—vehicles that can stimulate public imagination, generate alternative spatial visions, and mediate between architects, institutions, and socio-political forces.
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Mangold, William. 2005. "The Role of Utopianism in the Production of Space."
This paper surveys key themes in the literature of utopian thought, with a particular focus on connections to design and the environmental social sciences. It traces the historical development of utopianism from classical and biblical origins through literary, architectural, and communal experiments, highlighting how these projects both reflect and challenge their social milieus. The review considers utopianism’s relationship to ideology, its potential to expand social consciousness, and the tensions between speculative ideals and practical realization. Ultimately, it frames utopianism as a critical and creative force that shapes the ways societies imagine and inhabit space.
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Mangold, W. 2008. "Becoming a Space-Time Compressor: A First-Hand Account" Paper presented at Association of American Geographers, Annual Meeting, Boston, MA
This paper explores the relationship between lifestyle, social mobility, and the shifting conditions of time and space in contemporary society. Drawing on concepts of time–space compression (Harvey) and expansion (Katz), as well as philosophical debates of being and becoming, it situates personal narrative as a means to understand broader cultural and economic forces. Through a first-person account, it traces movements across class, geography, and circumstance to illuminate how power, identity, and opportunity are shaped by temporal and spatial dynamics. In doing so, the paper highlights the ambivalence of upward mobility, showing both the opportunities and costs of living within systems that compress and expand our lived experience.
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“Not all sacred experiences occur in sacred spaces, and not all sacred places are experienced as sacred.”
"Framing Sacred: Readings and Explorations" Paper and video presented at CUNY Graduate Center, Environmental Psychology Program Day (2008)
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Mangold, William. 2011. “Book Reviews: Camps by Charlie Hailey, Campsite by Charlie Hailey, A Manufactured Wilderness by Abigail Van Slyck” in Journal of Architectural Education
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Mangold, William. 2010. “Book Review: Cities in Modernity by Richard Dennis” in Journal of the Urban Geography, Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society
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Mangold, William. 2005. “Book Review: Spaces of Hope by David Harvey”