So you're an interior designer?
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No, I'm an architect. Oh, so you're an engineer? No, I'm an architect. This is what I imagine conversations in the future to be like when I explain my profession. It's funny because as a kid I was fascinated with where the furniture was placed in my house and always rearranging my room. So when asked what I liked about architecture, I would express of course the floor plans and overall building design but also the interior spaces, and how excited I was to lay out furniture. People would respond, "That's an interior designer's job." Before I knew what all architecture consisted of, I thought our role was that of an interior designer. The discussion about Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander helped me realize that the role of an architect is to create a functional room for the interior designer. The architect should think about furniture arrangement and functionality of the space because of the relationship that builds with the user. Architecture is about human-centered design and how people use the space so if we create a room that isn't functional that may turn into junkspace. When designing, I'm constantly placing furniture to see if the room is efficient or if something seems to be wasted space.
I similarly grew up not really knowing what an architect was, and thought our role would be similar to an engineer's. I love the idea of pattern language because architecture truly is more than organizing objects in a room with no purpose other than aesthetics. Spaces are formed based on our behavioral patterns and end up being transformed by these patterns physically. I would argue that junkspace does have function, it just appears as being superfluous or "extra" if it no longer fits our everyday needs or loses its initial purpose.
ReplyDeleteI feel like we all have a similar experience to the introduction of architecture. It brings up a good point about the distinction between architects and interior designers. It is important that designers create flexible spaces besides the distinction of furniture. Rather we consider circulation, lighting and more without adding to the space. Basically, I'm saying we are better.
ReplyDeleteStaci, I agree with your statement, "The architect should think about furniture arrangement and functionality of the space because of the relationship that builds with the user" because when I used to work on interior projects in India, sometimes the window location was the problem while doing furniture layout which is not cost effective for the interior designer to change especially for a newly constructed building. Therefore, I agree that architects should also think about the furniture layout and how the end user will be using the space.
ReplyDeleteI always tell people that my favorite thing to do is to layout furniture in a space and arrange spaces, to which I get told that I'm in the wrong profession. While the furniture arrangement might be the interior designer's job, I think it's also our job as architects to make sure those spaces are flexible and do not only accommodate for one furniture layout. Moving forward, we should play with furniture arrangements in our profession so that spaces can be rearranged and not confine the user to one scheme. Not thinking about these types of things limits what spaces could be in the future.
ReplyDeleteStaci, I agree! Before being in this field, i would've defined architecture as something completely different than i do today. Architecture, to me, is the feeling and control of space-- the experience, rather than the look of it (as many people who are not in our field do not understand).
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