Design For Business » Interior

Interior Designers Began to Take a Holistic Approach

sharp design — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:16:33 +0000

Global competition had forced America to completely rethink the way it did business in addition, advances in computer technology had reached critical mass. The resulting profound change for organizations, the workplace, and individual workers created a host of euphemisms for the word lay off reengineer, downsize, and rightsize among them. Just as the early 1980s brought profound change to the structure of business, it also changed the way corporate leaders thought about their companies’ real estate holdings, offices, and equipment. The 1980s brought radical change to the profession of interior design as well.

In the 1980s, companies continued the workplace economies that they had introduced during the heyday of reengineering. Because workers spent a greater amount of time at the office, they became attached to their computers and their workspaces. For the first time, interior designers needed to understand the concept of social dislocation as it applied to the workplace.

Ergonomic and health issues came up as well. Workers complained that computers produced eye strain. The repetitive keystroking used during word and information processing created something entirely new carpal tunnel syndrome. Long hours sitting in one place produced back problems and made choosing a well designed office chair not only a matter of aesthetics but a health and insurance issue as well. Interior designers began to take a holistic approach to their work and explore new areas of knowledge, such as management and the social sciences, that their education may not have included.

Interior Architecture Firm in The United States

sharp design — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:07:31 +0000

The 1960s in America saw widespread questioning and experimentation at all levels of society, from the personal to the institutional. Student protesters storming a university president’s office and putting their feet up on his desk became one of the decade’s many indelible visual metaphors. In a time that saw a U.S. President and other political leaders assassinated, civil rights marches proceeding peacefully alongside cities on fire, and the Vietnam war back-to-back with TV commercials for toothpaste, the hierarchy was on shaky ground. Once the dust settled, it was clear that values had shifted and the time had come for the rigid hierarchy to relax and make room for individual talent and entrepreneurship.

The 1960s introduced the contract interior design profession as we know it today. While in the 1950s architecture firms had begun to offer interior design services, the 1960s saw these interiors studios mature and develop into large, independent design firms that offered comprehensive interior design services.

One outstanding example is Gensler, Inc. In 1965, Arthur Gensler began his eponymous company in San Francisco, with $200 and two colleagues. The company initially provided space-planning services to business clients. Since
then, Gensler’s focus has expanded from space planning and office interior design to comprehensive architectural services; the company has grown from one office to 23 around the world, with more than 2,000 employees. Today, Gensler is acknowledged by its peers as the most respected and bestmanaged interior architecture firm in the United States.

Professional Interior Designers

sharp design — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:20:20 +0000

When interior design actually became recognized as a profession is a subject for debate. Some scholars believe that interior design was not acknowledged as an independent profession in America until 1897,when Edith Wharton and
Ogden Codman, Jr., published The Decoration of Houses. The authors are considered the first to define the profession as it is viewed today, by clarifying the difference between interior decoration, which deals with surface treatments, and interior design,which encompasses the design of interior spaces.
Elsie de Wolfe, a contemporary of Mrs. Wharton’s and a disciple of her approach, is considered to be one of America’s first professional interior designers. Her expertise, however, was on the side of interior decoration, which she used with great skill in the creation of interiors for the industrialist Henry Clay Frick and other wealthy New York families. She also accepted commissions from the prominent Beaux Arts architect Stanford White.

Early twentieth-century women who are also considered among the first design professionals are Nancy McClelland, who brought design services to the general public through the decorating department she established atWanamaker’s department store in Manhattan; and Eleanor McMillen, whose McMillen, Inc. is considered to be America’s first interior decorating firm.

The Education and Training of Interior Designers

sharp design — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:58:32 +0000

Compared to architecture, interior design is still in its infancy—a profession that is just now marshalling its forces to secure the recognition to which it feels entitled. All this is taking place against the background of our entrepreneurial and bandwidth-driven era. How important is it, in this context, to secure the profession’s boundaries or win state sanction for its practice? If it helps strengthen the education and training of interior designers, and encourages them to meet their responsibilities as professionals, then it is probably well worthwhile.

Especially today, it is hard to predict the future of the interior design profession. One clear way to prepare for it, however, is to make the education of interior design professionals much more rigorous. This argues for a more comprehensive curriculum, as I have outlined previously, and for a four-year professional degree program at the undergraduate level.

It also argues for learning, as Peter Senge calls it—not just maintaining skills, but actively learning from practice. Senge’s point, made admirably in his book, The Fifth Discipline,18 is that work itself is a learning experience of the first order. Our interactions with clients, colleagues, and other collaborators provide constant glimpses into an unfolding future. If we are attentive, we can understand some of what the future demands—and take steps to meet it appropriately. People who care about their careers, and who take their responsibilities as professionals seriously, need to make learning a constant priority.

Architecture or Interior Design

sharp design — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:54:49 +0000

The built environment today has immense range and diversity. Much development embraces multiple uses. The time dimension of buildings is changing, too, with more components expected (or needed) to be ephemeral rather than “permanent.” Already, many projects today feature hybrid teams that are organized around each project’s particular blend of uses and timeframes.

These interdisciplinary teams are the future. They expose each profession to the others and give all of them a shared perspective about “place” that transcends each one’s necessarily narrower view. This shared viewpoint may eventually give rise to entirely new professions, which we may no longer be willing to categorize as “architecture” or “interior design.” In time, too, the division between design and construction may prove to be an artificial boundary, no longer justified by practice.

Professions are conservative forces in society, constantly resisting pressures to change, yet constantly placed in situations where the need to change is obvious and imperative. New professions arise in part because old ones fail to adapt.

Interior Designers

sharp design — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:25:53 +0000

Interior designers who anguish about the time it is taking to secure state sanction for their profession’s title and practice should bear in mind that it took architects a lot longer. Arguments overwho is and is not qualified to design buildings punctuate the history of the profession.In the Middle Ages in Europe, the master masons were the building architects.

During the Renaissance in Italy, artistarchitects supplanted them. They were considered to be qualified as architects owing to their training in design. Architects such as Brunelleschi and Michelangelo took a strong interest in engineering and technology, too, as they strove to realize their ambitious building projects. With Vitruvius, they believed that architecture was a liberal art that combined theory and practice.

Master masons, who apprenticed in the building trades,were disparaged because their training was purely practical. Yet the Italian Renaissance also saw the emergence of the professional in Europe’s first true architect, Antonio Sangallo the Younger. Apprenticed to the artist-architect Bramante, Sangallo helped implement many of Bramante’s later buildings. In time, he established a studio that is recognizably the prototype for today’s architecture and design firms. The architectural historian James Ackerman has described him as “one of the few architects of his time who never wanted to be anything else.”

Interior Design Is Still in its Infancy

sharp design — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:14:08 +0000

This shared viewpoint may eventually give rise to entirely new professions, which we may no longer be willing to categorize as “architecture” or “interior design.” In time, too, the division between design and construction may prove to be an artificial boundary, no longer justified by practice. Professions are conservative forces in society, constantly resisting pressures to change, yet constantly placed in situations where the need to change is obvious and imperative. New professions arise in part because old ones fail to adapt.
Compared to architecture, interior design is still in its infancy—a profession that is just now marshalling its forces to secure the recognition to which it feels entitled. All this is taking place against the background of our entrepreneurial and bandwidth-driven era. How important is it, in this context,to secure the profession’s boundaries or win state sanction for its practice? If it helps strengthen the education and training of interior designers, and encourages them to meet their responsibilities as professionals, then it is probably well worthwhile.

Interior Designers Must Contend With Ethical Issues

sharp design — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:56:23 +0000

Like other professionals, interior designers must contend with ethical issues. Indeed, the issues can be quite similar to those of allied and other learned professions. Like architects, lawyers, and doctors, interior designers can also do bodily harm and create financial damage if they practice incompetently or unethically. They can also put people at risk by failing to be effective advocates of their interests. Here are some examples of these issues as they arise in interior design practice.

Life safety. Designers sometimes bemoan codes and regulations, but these rules exist to establish a minimum standard of health and safety. Failure to meet code can delay a project, which damages the owner, and can also cause bodily harm.
• Confidentiality. Interior designers often have access to confidential business information—a planned acquisition, for example, or a new business plan or strategy. This knowledge is shared with interior designers only because it has a direct bearing on their work, and it is shared with them in confidence. Ethically, and often by contract, that confidence must be respected.

Conflict of interest. Interior designers are their clients’ agents, so they have an obligation to avoid or disclose to them any potential conflicts of interest. (Disclosure means that you are prepared to end the conflict if the client so requests.) The appearance of conflict can be as problematic as the reality.

While Interior Designers Are Focused

sharp design — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:49:08 +0000

Also working from a “time-layered” perspective, Brand proposes a holistic approach to time-sensitive design. He identifies six components of buildings: site, structure, skin, services, and space plan. While interior designers are focused on the last two, they have good reason to want to influence the rest: they all affect the building’s use through time. To exercise this influence effectively, of course, interior designers have to understand the characteristics of these components, and the possibilities of the other elements of the built environment. Interior designers do not have to be engineers, orvice versa, but both need to know enough about the others’ business so they can approach the building in a holistic or time-layered way.

To be responsive to the user in the building design process, interior designers need to have this broader knowledge of the building and its components.In the end, their ability to sway others in the design and delivery process will rest primarily on issues of use over time—issues that are primarily functional and strategic, and that constantly require new skills.

However, interior designers can make a strong case that they should be accorded the distinctions and protections that are part of other design professions such as architecture. No less than architects, interior designers are engaged in “the entire design problem.” As advocates of the user, and as designers who are “fourth-dimension sensitive,” they are often the first ones in the building design process to point out how one or another of the building’s components makes it harder for its settings to evolve easily to meet new needs. As designers’ interest in indoor air quality demonstrates, they are concerned with quality of life, too—with user performance, not just building performance.

Interior Designers Make it Their Business

sharp design — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:19:08 +0000

Yet this focus on strategy does not entirely explain the impact that interior designers have had on the workplace. More than any other profession involved in the design of these settings, they have been able to use their knowledge of workplace culture to design work settings that genuinely support the people who use them. Interior designers make it their business to know how people actually inhabit and experience the built environment.

Their work—certainly the best of it—consistently reflects this understanding. The licensing controversy notwithstanding, interior designers today are valued members of building design teams precisely because they bring this knowledge to the table. Some of the most valuable research on the workplace in recent years has been done by interior designers who specialize in work settings for corporate, financial, and professional service clients. Gensler’s Margo Grant and Chris Murray, for example, have done pioneering work documenting the changing strategic goals of these companies and how they play out in spatial terms. Their benchmarking studies give Gensler and its clients a wealth of comparative data about facilities trends across the developed world’s economy. Needless to say, this is a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.