Rate My Professor Rana Abudayyeh

Rana Abudayyeh serves as Associate Professor and Robin Klehr Avia Professor of Interior Architecture in the School of Interior Architecture within the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the University of New Mexico. Prior to her current role, she taught architecture at the University of New Mexico and worked as a registered architect in Jordan, practicing with Antoine Predock Architect on civic and cultural projects. She joined the University of Tennessee faculty in 2015.

Abudayyeh's research focuses on interiority as a site of lived experience, especially in displacement, conflict, and social precarity. Her work explores improvised vernacular spatial practices for placemaking, cultural continuity, and societal transformation, intersecting spatial justice, representation, digital making, and AI-mediated technologies with an emphasis on ethical, human-centered design. Her publications appear in Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, Journal of Interior Design, Interiority, MONU, IDEA Journal, and Journal of Interventions and Adaptive Reuse. Notable works include "Grafting Interiority: Generative Methodologies Between the Natural and the Synthetic" (Interiority, 2021), "The Changing Room: Towards an Interior Multiplicity" (Interiors, 2021), and "Understanding the Micro-Urban Commons as a Shared Public Interior Framework" (Journal of Interior Design, 2023). She has contributed to edited volumes such as Upkeep: Repair and Maintenance in Adaptive Interiors, Public Interiority, Informality and the City, and Speculative Coolness, and is currently editing The Routledge Companion to Human-Centered Interior Design (forthcoming 2027). Among her honors are the IIDA Educator Diversity Award and the IDEC Teaching Excellence Award. Her expertise encompasses computer-based design tools, advanced manufacturing, innovative materials, refugee camp strategies, adaptive interiors, and green wall systems.