If the early 21st century can be characterised as a time of resistance, in particular to the climate emergency, how can the built-environment, and in particular the interior, respond to these ongoing challenges? This chapter will argue that in response to a world with finite resource, the very-near future of the built environment will be focussed solely on the re-designation of all existing matter. New-build and single-use processes will be obsoleted distinctions for making cities, buildings and interiors. Instead, degrowing a place, reusing the existing site, with its matter already in-situ, will provide the material for the appropriation of the existing, into something new.

This chapter will explore the origination of interior space through appropriations that colonise existing buildings through processes that foreground degrowth. Degrowth, is a phrase originating from the late twentieth century. It is one that advocates for the prioritisation of social and ecological well-being, over excessive forms of consumption. It is a word used to frame limits to numerous forms of growth; in particular, the global economics of capitalism. Instead, it advocates for the prioritising of care, equitability, and the common values of the local. It describes a resistance to all forms of extractivist environmental degradation, unsustainable resource depletion, and excessive and wasteful processes of built-environment developments. Degrowing, emphasises approaches that foreground maintenance, and the prioritisation of the incorporation of the repair of the existing. It advocates for the care of space and its occupants, the incorporation of entropy and decay, do-it-yourself approaches such as salvage, hacking, and so on. This chapter will explore the idea of degrowing interiors, through the exploration of a series of projects and the ideas behind them.