Abstract:

One of the main challenges in interior design today is a wise approach to the field, enabling the creation of meaningful spaces. The issue converges around the value of the profession and the differentiation from the simple practical arrangement of interior components as done on social media. This study concentrates on the value of the interior design profession and how a concept and scale approach can help draw this distinction that enables a studied approach to interior design, creating more meaningful spaces that enhance the life quality of their users. This situation has become even more crucial during the pandemic as communications have increased in amount and speed, resulting challenges in ability to process the information. This lack of processing and possibility to digest the flood of information has resulted in a lack of knowledge and even more wisdom, in this hierarchical order. In this paper, a distinction is drawn on these terminologies with the varying levels of necessity in the field of interior design and education. First, information is defined as facts about a certain situation or event which might be interpreted as the design brief. Second, knowledge requires experience and time, and an understanding of a subject through both individual and collective study, such as an easier access to the design project. A level of wisdom necessitates the skills to use the information, prior knowledge and experience to be able to make useful, but more significantly, meaningful decisions and judgments. Throughout definitions of design, though it might refer to a product, process or service, a common aspect can be understood as an element of change; to move from a current state to a more desired state. This is easier said than done. It requires not only an understanding of the facts an interior design brief brings, nor a knowledge of the field, but the means to gather them both functionally and aesthetically, which points to an essential wiser position within the field. Human beings communicate in stories and a well-designed interior tells a particular story of identity and context. This story requires functional responses to specific needs of the life to take place inside it, however, the need for an aesthetically pleasing way to tell this story is equally, if not sometimes more important. Although the first examples of architecture are defined as simple huts, an aesthetic approach to spatial definition can be traced back to the caves, with advanced storytelling on the walls and with regards to the arrangement of spatial components of the interior. Therefore, aesthetic storytelling and communication through interior space has its roots in the primary needs of human beings. Here, information, knowledge, and wisdom are all involved. Today, due to the profession of interior design becoming a fast-paced business being practiced as a process of combining items and images devoid of background, context or story, this basic necessity is forgotten. The reintroducing of wise storytelling in interior design needs to be a focus in interior design education in order to create meaningful interiors of the future coming from the most basic needs of communication of the past.

Keywords:

Interior design education, interior architecture, design, meaning, aesthetics, information, knowledge, wisdom.