by Brad Powell

4.19.11 | My antennae are tingling. The airwaves are carrying wisps of a renewal of discussions between IIDA and ASID about the possibility of a merger. This unification, I have been told, has been advocated by many members of theColleges of Fellows of these professional organizations. Incumbent officers and directors, however, must shoulder the risks and concerns that are inherent in any such merger, and in resolving perceived impediments. Thus, those who can look at the issue from some distance – the Fellows, past presidents, and many members, and industry supporters – accept the principal of a merger, while those who must deal with the details have the considered restraint appropriate to transformative responsibility. This is understandable: it’s easier to critique the “decider” than to be one. But the responsibility of any board is not usually to make the final decision regarding fundamental changes, but to formulate a solid proposal for acceptance or ratification by the greater membership.

The issues are not without their difficulties, and they never will be. But now, it’s time to move forward and, with that in mind, I write this

Open letter to the ASID and IIDA Boards of Directors:

For fifteen years I have marveled at the willingness of interior designers to donate their precious time and talents to many and varied causes. As my late father-in-law would say, they are incorrigible do-gooders . . . well, he wouldn’t have said “incorrigible,” but you get the idea.And it’s true, interior designers seem to love to do nothing more with their spare time than to exercise their design skills for the common good. So, how about doing something for yourselves:

Here’s a challenge, and I throw down the gauntlet to all interior designers: Design Your Profession . . . and start by designing a new unified professional organization. If you don’t, someone will do it for you, for example, architects and the Interior Design Protective Council.

In my continuing series, Interior Design: Toward a New Definition, I have made several points including the following: “Design is never discretionary. Its unavoidable.” While this was written in the context of “ an interior design,” it applies equally well to all of our activities. As I noted:

It’s one of the salient characteristics of human beings. We act by design, by purpose, with a goal in mind. It’s unavoidable. We can’t help ourselves.

The upshot, then, is that whether by intent or indifference, there is design in every situation. Whether the design is good/suitable, or falls short of what is required, let alone optimal, depends upon the effort and expertise brought to bear. This holds true for interior design, as a profession, and its professional organization(s) as it does for the interior “designs,” too many of which fall short because they did not get the services of a qualified interior designer.

I am not one of those who believe that architects and designers, because they have a grounding in the “design process” are now qualified to tackle all of the problems of the world. But because of this grounding, and because of their thoughts of what their profession is and what it should aspire to become, who is better qualified to design their own profession? And is not the next best step in this the design of a new, more inclusive and effective interior design organization?

Does the profession need a new design? Of course. There is no system, including an organization, that doesn’t require some periodic rethinking. The U.S. Constitution, for example – although authored by very wise individuals who had studied the remarkable development of forms of government in the previous two thousand years – has been amended 27 times, with amendments ranging from refinements to fundamental changes. Designers can also look at their clients, whose organizational changes are more frequent than their spaces presently accommodate. (See officeinsight 11.22.10, Teknion NeoCon 2010 Interior Design Panel - Installment 1: New Opportunities, the presentation by Dean Matsumoto, Kasian) And the types of expertise brought to bear in these changes, and in the related space designs, range far and wide.

Truly, it is not pure speculation to suggest that every organization needs a re-think periodically. I have written several times about the need for a unified interior design professional organization. (See officeinsight 8.31.09, 9.7.09, 9.14.09, To Merge or Not to Merge; officeinsight 10.20.08, A Random Walk: A Single Voice for Interior Design), and I do not intend now to re-plow these fields. Here, however, are some issues that I recited in the 9.14.09 issue that would benefit from a strong unified interior design organization:

The issues facing the interior design profession referred to in previous installment of this series, include:

http://media.officeinsight.com/images/template/icons/gt.tradegothicbold2.14pt.12px.png); ">
• Creating a systemic view of the built environment and its professions
• Defining the proper scope of the profession and its relationships with the built environment and the other professions dealing with it
• Creating a multi-tiered profession and educational levels
• Professional economics
• Continuity of professional generations
• Total reconsideration of legislative initiatives to find a coherent multi-state approach to interior design regulation
• Developing a comprehensive educational program regarding all professions working in the interior environment
• Ensuring that all levels of interiors practice have easy access to knowledge developed at the highest levels of the profession and academia
• Ensuring that all vulnerable populations benefit from accreted interiors knowledge

Only a unified and forceful organization with a sound economic base, an effective and consistent strategy and a growing platform of members and social contribution can expect to endure and achieve its vision. Most of us are aware that many of the contributions to interior design have been made by architects and other design professionals and that the question of “interior design” as a distinct field is far from settled. (More and more architects are beginning to ask whether interior design should be just a specialty of architecture and architecture education.)

Now is the time to take up this challenge. Over the past year, there have been several contributions to the body of thought regarding the nature of “interior design.” officeinsight’s continuing series mentioned above provides the following definitions that distinctively focus on human-environment interactions:

Interior design is the study and practice of applying knowledge of human-environment interactions to plan interior environments suitable for their intended use.

Interior design professionals are experts in the interior built environment. Their expertise is based on an understanding of human and environmental characteristics and the related ecologies. Their unique competence is the ability to translate this understanding into spaces that are appropriate for their intended use.

And there are many additional thought pieces:

http://media.officeinsight.com/images/template/icons/gt.tradegothicbold2.14pt.12px.png); ">
• International Federation of Interior Architecture/Design (See  officeinsight 3.7.11, An Historic Event: IFI Design Frontiers: The Interiors Entity (DFIE) Global Symposium)
• The State of the Interior Design Profession [Paperback], Caren S. Martin , Denise A. Guerin (Fairchild Press 2010)

In addition, IIDA is in the process of putting together the thoughts of its members regarding the profession. Here is the Working/Draft Language provided by Cheryl Durst, CEO and Executive Director of IIDA:

Interior Design is the professional and comprehensive practice of creating interior environments that address, protect and respond to human needs. It is the art, science and business planning of a creative, technical and functional interior solution that corresponds to the architecture of a space, while incorporating process, strategy, a mandate for health, safety, sustainability,  and informed decisions about functionality, efficiency and aesthetics.

The IIDA exercise, I am told, is part of an overall/comprehensive effort started over a year ago at the request of members, to have a common lexicon (and response) to the question of “What is interior design?” and is not intended to replace other efforts. Ms. Durst said that her mother, Dorothea Stubblefield, a retired microbiologist, viewed this language favorably saying that, “What resonated with her is that design is a ‘precise and well-orchestrated response to how human beings can and should exist in the spaces that surround them.’” Well, Ms. Stubblefield, pass it on; you have, indeed reached a good sense of the field. But most of our population has not.

These and similar issue have been on the table for the past 30 years, in different contexts. With at least two series of discussions between ASID and IIDA in the past decade, the ground is well prepared. So, while these issues are often left to a few, while many of us wring our hands on the sidelines about the lack of social, professional and economic relevance of interior design and its practice, this is a time when everyone can make a difference by putting their design talents to use in designing the interior design professional organization of the 21st century. My vision: architecture will follow interior design, rather than interior design “corresponding to the architecture of the space.”

Quite appropriately, it is the tendency, even the responsibility, of designers to take into account the possible adverse consequences of their designs. But in taking up this challenge, I recommend that designers heed their own adopted mantra of looking at how things might be, and asking “Why not?” In this vein, I suggest that the following steps could be beneficial:

http://media.officeinsight.com/images/template/icons/gt.tradegothicbold2.14pt.12px.png); ">
• Members of each organization should reflect on and summarize the positive aspects of their own organization, putting aside anticipated obstacles, “those frightful things that,” according to Henry Ford, “you see when we take your eyes off goal”
• Seek advice and comment of “industry” members, as well as the input from professional organizations such as BIFMA, OFDA, IFMA, IDEC, NCIDQ and CIDA
• Seek input and collaboration from other related organizations, including that of AIA, National Kitchen & Bath Designers, Interior Design Protective Counsel, and associations pertaining to other aspects of the built environment, even if these organizations are deemed hostile; they are all part of what should be an integrated built environment
• Provide an open comment period for stakeholders as an way to obtain valuable input from many sources

Some of the most important issues to be addressed include:

http://media.officeinsight.com/images/template/icons/gt.tradegothicbold2.14pt.12px.png); ">

• Preparing by-laws that represent 21st century organization thinking and governance.
  To begin, a combined committee should be formed to examine the existing by-laws of ASID and IIDA. The objective of proper by-laws is to seek an appropriate balance between form/order/leadership, on the one hand, and change/participation on the other. (see officeinsight 2.7.11, A Random Walk: Interior Design: Toward A New Definition - Part 6 – Why Design) An effective and strong executive leadership is required to accomplish goals. Unfortunately, too often the executive staff serves as a filter for agendas, information and discussion, and therefore, inhibits a productive and open consideration by elected boards and chapter leadership. There will always be a great deal of flex in this arrangement, but there also should be some checks and balances. Problems will inevitably occur when the membership, at large or through the chapter leadership, is too tightly controlled and foreclosed from any meaningful participatory role.

  One way to avoid this would be to provide a leadership structure for a chapter leadership council. This would be loosely analogous to a “house of representatives,” and would require (i) it’s own leadership that would create its own agenda, not controlled by the executive or elected national officers, (ii) methods of confirming significant acts of the national board and (iii) an opportunity to offer its own resolutions for action by the board. The objective, of course, is to create a structure that implements the principle that the board, and certainly all of the executive staff, is in service to the membership. While I haven’t been able to review the by-laws of both ASID and IIDA, some fundamental decisions, such as organizational merger – might well require membership approval, and not lie solely in the hands of the board. After all, such a merger and a restructuring of by-laws usually constitutes a change in the fundamental compact between the organization and its members.

• Envisioning a structure that is inclusive of the interior design field.
  It is a profound mistake to alienate valued professionals and ambassadors in pursuit of the purity of elitism through some form of perverted social Darwinism. The 20th century has seen too much of the failure of this type of thinking. If what is desired is a private social organization or some sort of cocoon of like interests as in a country club, that’s an entirely different matter.

  But the object, as I understand it, is to form an effective professional interior design organization that can actually accomplish something for the profession and its consuming public. In this regard, the most influential interior designers in North America are residential interior designers, both by number and by interpersonal contact with the general population. They are the great ambassadors of interior design to the general public. Rather than isolate this group through elitism, it should be recognized and embraced for its manifest contribution to the public welfare, and should be educated through the same conduits for information, training and best practices as are available to commercial designers. Obviously, the residential area can also be expected to be in the forefront of sustainability, universal design and aging-in-place.

I don’t suggest by this that interior designers must be a homogeneous group without standards. Every developed profession has its standards, levels of education, segmentation of responsibility, and higher specialties. Interior design must recognize this as a given for this era, even though some work, as it should be, would go to those who meet the minimum requirements deem necessary for a particular task. It shouldn’t require a brain surgeon to give a shot, stitch a laceration or draw blood. We must also consider the basic economic right of various specialties to practice their profession and the right of owner-occupants to select their own professionals.

For those whose aspirations are akin those of the architecture profession, don’t set your sights too low. Sure there are the great architect stars, but not that many. For the rest, it’s pretty much the same limbo that hosts the interior design field. The fact is that a much greater population needs, and can afford, the services of an interior designer than those of a building architect. And it is becoming increasingly clear that architecture must become much more responsive to the requirements of the interior; that’s what “designing from the inside” is all about. As this concept takes hold, many architects will see the interiors as more properly a very meaningful – and lucrative – subset of architecture and move to subsume interior design within that profession. While greater integration of the two professions is essential, interior design, as a field, has already established its bona fides. Now it must aggressively develop its profession, as such, to keep pace with its potential.

Among the questions that must be looked at objectively is, “Should architecture be a sub-specialty within interior design?” At the very least, one might think of architecture and interior design as co-equal sub-specialties within a unified curriculum for the building arts and sciences. There is a sound argument that this would best create a platform for progress in the built environment. Isn’t this a reasonable extension of the “design from the inside” concept. The day is surely not far off when the thought of designing buildings without incorporating core interior design concepts – beyond windows, HVAC and power – will seem primitive.

Obviously, it would significantly alter both professions. As it stands, it should be deemed to be unacceptable that architecture and interior design education, respectively, present gaps amounting to an abyss regarding the other discipline: too many architects know little beyond essentials of form about interior design, and, except for interior designers with architecture degrees, the lack of knowledge of architecture among interior designers is, at the very least, lamentable and perplexing.

The effects of interior design, good and bad, upon individuals and groups is just beginning to be measured, and its consequences are presently incalculable. But this is certain: these effects are very significant and formative. Accordingly, the issue is not so much what the profession wants, but what the consuming public needs from the profession. I believe that this can be best addressed by a well-designed overarching professional interiors organization.

In a sense, designers are futurists. They must be, because creating the future is what they do. This, by its very nature, requires a certain fearlessness built upon a confidence that the present can be improved and upon a natural curiosity that yearns to see what that future will be. This could be an exciting time indeed.