The Interiors of Social Media

How is social media reshaping architecture? What can platforms like Instagram, Twitch, Pinterest, and TikTok tell us about the spaces we inhabit? The Interiors of Social Mediais the first book to explore the relationship between architecture, interiors, and social media, guiding us through today’s digital landscape to reveal where the virtual and physical worlds meet. From influencer bedrooms and gaming setups to humanitarian shelters, pet influencer homes, and porn rooms, Javier Fernández Contreras reveals how social media does not merely depict interiors, but actively scripts new spatial types: homes that are both private and hyper-public, domestic yet performative, and material yet algorithmic. By mapping platform spatialities and tracing the themes that connect them, he examines interiors as sites of consumerism, display, and mediatization—environments that expose the ethical, political, and ecological implications of 21st-century digital culture. Drawing on architecture, media studies, and digital humanities,The Interiors of Social Mediaoffers a critical lens on how online interactions are woven into everyday life—and invites us to rethink architecture in the age of the algorithm. The Interiors of Social Media provides a critical exploration of how social media is influencing contemporary architecture, focusing on interior spaces as sites of consumerism, display, and mediatization. Through a dual-layered methodology— analyzing platform spatialities and tracing transversal topics across them—this book positions interior space as a territory that is simultaneously domestic and performative, private and hyper-public, material and digitized. As illustrated by the interiors of the most-followed accounts on Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, and Pinterest—alongside representations of space in humanitarian crises, adult content platforms, animal domesticities, and gaming environments—social media spaces construct not only human identities but also non-human bodies and environments, often reinforcing asymmetries of power, visibility, and agency. Building on data analytics and digital humanities, The Interiors of Social Media ultimately maps the conteporary interior as both an architectural construct and a societal apparatus in today’s media landscape, shedding light on the ethical, political, and ecological implications of digital platforms.