This article begins with the fact of 20th century public interiors being an endangered heritage. In Sweden, lack of statutory scope for protect- ing movable furniture has been singled out as a major cause of the difficult preservation status of interiors. This is fair comment, but not the prime concern for present purposes, the main thesis here being that the fact of so few envi- ronments being extant is connected with the absence of public interiors from historiography and a lack of canon formation in this context.

Interiors in Stockholm Göteborg Malmö, the guide published in 1968 by the Swedish Asso- ciation of Interior Architects (SIR), provides the point of departure here for discussing the histo- riography of the subject, and at the same time serves to underscore the gravity of the threat to public interiors. The SIR guide is an important, but previously overlooked, source concerning public interior designs of the 1950s and 60s, and to some extent also concerning designs from the first half of the 20th century.

The fact of public interiors being an unex-plored field is demonstrated, for example, by the subject’s omission from Swedish histories of art and architecture. In addition, this article shows, with the SIR guide as its starting point, how the traditional inventory and evaluation methods of heritage governance have resulted in public interiors being lost to sight, due to the individual building being the smallest unit of mention. Interiors, which often have a short lifecycle, have also fallen victim to a historical distance of some 30 years being considered nec- essary in order to get the building under consid- eration into perspective.

The conclusion arrived at is that changing the law so as to extend protection to movable furniture will not be enough to legitimise these environments as part of the heritage. The sub- ject also needs to be observed by research and valuable objects identified and singled out. This in turn calls for a renewal of the traditional methods of inventorying and valuing places of historic interest.