Interior Design: An Identity Outside Architecture & Decorating

Most architects will say that “interior design is inferior to architecture”. With AIA, American Institute of Architects and NCARB, National Council of Architectural Registration Board lobbying against interior design to be deregulated of licensing and titling for future professional, it is pretty obvious how architects perceive interior design. Decorators like the ones seen on HGTV make interior design look like an entire could be completed in hour, when it takes months sometimes years to actually just put it all together. Decorators consider themselves to be Interior Designers, although through the NCIDQ, legally they are not.  ASID, American Society of Interior Design, FIDER, Foundation for Interior Design of Education and Research, and the NCIDQ, National Council of Interior Design Qualifications, all collaboratively oversee the development and maintence of these criteria for education and practice.
Architecture, Interior Design, and Decorating (in a very specific order) all have three completely separate definitions.  According to dictionary.com architecture means the profession of designing buildings, open areas, communities, and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect, interior design means the design and coordination of the decorative elements of the interior of a house, apartment, office, or other structural space, including color schemes, fittings, furnishings, and sometimes architectural features and decorating means to plan and execute the furnishings and ornamentation of the interior. According to Jessica Napoli, home of this blog, these definitions need a little tweaking. For starters, architecture is the beginning stages of building. They are the skeletal structure of a building. The pieces that make the card house stand up. They deal with anything that is structural in a building through supports. Decorating is simply that. It is taking a space that is pre-determined and changing fabrics, paint and furniture. Interior Design is a slight combination of the two with advancement in the design element. Like I’ve mentioned in my previous blog it’s something more than most people think. Interior Design is taking the health and safety of public and design a space(s) that are both true to form and function of its users.

Architecture has been said to be superior to Interior Design, and this a constant struggle that the field as whole is trying to get out from underneath. Although there are pre-dominantly more men in architecture and more women in interior design, as the new generation is coming into its own, we are seeing a mixture of the two genders even spread throughout both professions. It’s not that women are “just as good as” men. But instead we are equals with women pulling ahead of men in certain areas and vice versa.
Decorating is something that an uneducated designer can do. They have no formal education or experience of federal code standards or human factors of space. They have no idea how lighting can affect a space based on its exterior environment or how dimensional finishes will fit or look on a floor plan. Most decorators can go on a trip to Home Depot and Rooms To Go on a weekend adventure and complete their idea of an Interior Design project without even thinking about the idea of demolition and renovation.
Interior Design as a profession has started to spread its roots of history and advocacy of the profession more and more and will only continue to do so in the future.
“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” - Charles Eames

The Value of Interior Design & Its Connectivity to Me

Interior Design is something more to me than just selecting furniture and paint colors. it’s choosing where walls will be placed, ADA specifying in any public area, selecting correct flooring for the function of each area of space within a building, making sure that the safety of every person that walks in to a space is in careful consideration, making sure that the function of each area is clear and easily accessible and that every space has well circulation throughout. When people who have no idea what Interior Design is, this is what I tell them. it makes me mad to think that the a-typical housewife wants to call herself an Interior Designer instead of what she actually is which is a DECORATOR by trying to take my title that one day soon will have. She has no idea what code is, or how to spec carpets, acoustics, and textiles and so on. Not to mention she has not taken four years of education, including an internship as well as having two years of field experience before she can even take the exam. I think that interior design is a very important factor in how a space will function overall. Choosing the right colors and furniture only assist in this process. Giving each space a specific function and making it clear through furniture selection, colors, door selection, and window treatment and so make it easy for the user to identify what they are there to do. Interior design is not just about color selection it also has to do with moving anything inside a building that is not structural. It’s about allowing the user to do what they came there to do without having the distraction of the space they are in.

All my life I had grown up saying that I was going to become a lawyer, suddenly thinking of changing my life career plan was a little freighting for me. My career adviser suggested taking some art classes on campus and seeing whether I enjoyed them or not. I took a drawing and oil painting class and really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until I took an art history class that I really fell in love with interior design. Looking at all these historical and architectural buildings and seeing how even back in the 1200’s, 400’s B.C., 1600’s and so on, they were thinking of functionality of the spaces they were building. The ancient Romans built in a way so that they could keep expanding onto their existing buildings for whatever reason they needed the extra space for. I then looked into an architecture degree, upon doing this I came across Interior Design and loved the potential I could have in shaping a space to multiple different functions based on materials. Being in the program at the Art Institute for the last fifteen months has only reassured me that I am right where I am supposed to be.

Although I think highly of Interior Designers, as seeing that I am soon to be one, the profession is not valued as highly as I wish it was. Some, not all, architects don’t really see the difference in what we do. But if you have ever seen an interior of an architect versus an interior designer there is a complete difference. Interior Designers know how take a space and give it maximum functionality. Interior Design is not that valued in the state of Florida by people who are outside the professional. Through recent deregulation issues, it almost gave designers currently in the field a hard time in sealing their own designs in which they are highly capable of doing according to the NCIDQ. Fortunately some highly educated individuals saw the evil in the people trying to push this deregulation, and stopped it from happening. Thank you to those people who helped in doing this, you are much appreciated!

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

-Steve Jobs