Can we all just get along?

Lately there has been a lot of talk about interior designers and legislature to set this profession apart from the others. Interior design takes into account the user of each space and uses form to design for safety and function. It takes a lot of knowledge to design a space that is why it is important to have schools that support to build our knowledge as well as testing and legislature to help regulate the field.

So, why is it so hard to separate interior design from other design fields like architecture? Author Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand wrote an article called A View from the Margin: Interior Design, here she explains that “Interior design is perceived as feminine, superficial, and mimetic as compared to a male, rational, and original architecture,” so the confusion between the professions lies with gender roles. Men have the more superior role as architects and women have an inferior role as a designer. Although I do not completely agree with this, it sheds new light on an ever present issue to separate the two professions.

Havenhand also states, “In trying to assert that women were “as good as” men, they were only asking to be continually compared to them,” this statement is profound, the more we try to differentiate, the more we will be linked. I have taken a few elementary design courses at the architecture department in USF, these courses forced me to develop concept statements, to look at the projects as a whole (not in parts), to focus on my parti, and have my concept statement speak through my parti and my final model. I had to stand in front of a jury of thesis grad students and explain in a few words what I attempted to do, and if it wasn’t clearly defined, I would have to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come. They would rip your ideas apart. To them a mass was looked at from the exterior giving little significance to the interior, ignoring small moments experienced inside the form constructed. Now enrolled in the interior design program I am developing knowledge I was unable to obtain previously. I am ever changing. I am learning about the human experience, the interior environment, and materials. An architect gives importance to the outside, building from the outside in, an interior designer builds from the inside out, however before our pencils touch the paper we create a human connection that often times lacks in architecture.

There are a lot of talented designers be it interior designers or architects, each have something to offer and neither should be disregarded or put down as a spectator in the field of design or even as a mimic. The more diverse the field of design is the better we will be able to link humanity and the built environment. Often times we are afraid of what we do not know or afraid of what will happen, however the more we understand and build our knowledge, the more conscious design will emerge. 

An opinion is just an opinion; it doesn’t denote right or fact. Often times its misinformation mixed with bias. It is our responsibility to educate not only ourselves but also the public. 

Design Ties

I consider myself biracial. My ethnicity is muddled with the very traditional south Asian world and a more free European world. My father is Punjabi and grew up in Pakistan; my mother is half Turkish and half Kurdish growing up in the outskirts of Iraq. Both have their traditions and cultures, however neither have anything in common. I spent 11 years of my childhood in Pakistan; these are my roots my childhood filled with colorful images and emotions. My family and I immigrated to Toronto, Canada; here I spent 11 more years of my adolescent life. Toronto was very much a shock, I felt as if I was transported instantly into a world I had never met, one minute I was home in Pakistan enjoying the summer rains, the canal I drove past every day and the familiarity of my home, and the next I am in a city that hadn’t even noticed my arrival. Toronto is a busy city lined with closely packed buildings, alluring alleys and streets painted in fun colors (my first introduction to graffiti). When I think about it now, Toronto evoked my understanding of design, starting with scale; I was so tiny in such a large city. Walking from a narrow and long alley with the sides of these buildings towering over me showing only a slip of the sky above and just the hope of what’s to come in the clearing, finally opening up revealing a wide and busy street. The city was a very interesting experience; I never thought I would ever see beauty in it, but I did. I learned a lot from it, I learned what worked and why certain things were done the way they were, I also learned what didn’t work and what, if I had my hand in it, would I change. A city can be many things, and this is the same for interior design, it’s hard to summarize it in a sentence or paragraph, interior design is many things, it is essential. We create order in a built environment that helps us escape the disordered natural environment; we bring function to improve the quality of life; interior design is everything and everywhere, a language, a tool, a way of expression,  it is a way of being; for me it is, there for I am.