Category: ASID
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UTAH PASSES COMMERCIAL INTERIOR DESIGN PRACTICE BILL!
Utah Senate Bill 0117 which allows state certified Commercial Interior Designers to submit signed and sealed drawings (within limited scope) in order to obtain building permits in that state was approved today. Yay! This is the first substantial piece of ID legislation to be approved in several years. Kudos to IDEAL Utah and their lobbyist […]
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CALIFORNIA DREAMING
PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER has posted many times regarding the issue of California and its private self-regulated, voluntary Interior Design certification program. While California is the largest interior design market in the nation it remains an anomaly in the big picture of the domestic U.S. Interior Design profession’s efforts to establish nationwide practice licensure status. I have just […]
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INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE vs. INTERIOR DESIGN
So my point here folks is there are many of us who believe that the term/title “Interior Design” no longer applies. It is a liability. It fails to describe us. Okay I do not disagree. But if we are going to keep our collective head in the proverbial professional sand while this title shift occurs organically, or by happenstance, we may be surprised by what we see when we do pull our heads out. Makes it a bit of challenge to demand the public’s respect if we do not know what to call ourselves.
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IIDA Steps Up to Forge Agreement with Food Service Equipment Distributors
Wow two positive efforts to advocate for the Interior Design profession in one week (see previous post). This time it is IIDA that ironed out an agreement with FEDA which is an allied association that represents commercial food service equipment distributors. FEDA has been a long term opponent of most, if not all, recent ID legislation. For now it appears that the IIDA advocacy team has ironed out whatever misunderstandings there were regarding ID legislation and its infringement on FEDA’s members, real or imagined. You can read FEDA’s point of view here along with the letter of understanding. http://www.feda.com/new/2015/10/IIDAagreement.pdf It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the next round of ID legislative efforts.
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ASID Counters Claims of Racial Bias In the Interior Design Profession
Wow……..the anti-ID regulationists finally played the race card. ASID’s counter statement is well written. Let’s hope it is well read. https://www.asid.org/content/asid-defends-interior-designer-capital-hill All that said, the licensed design professions have struggled to increase racial diversity. We acknowledge this and from my experience there is, and has been, a concerted effort to address this issue. To claim that we are conspiring to limit access to the profession due to race is simply politically correct race baiting in reverse. Ain’t politics fun?
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Hey Farooq…..Maybe it’s Time to Change Your Business Model
http://www.newstimes.com/business/article/Ethan-Allen-re-ups-CEO-next-up-designers-6551652.php Maybe, just maybe, if you considered Interior Design as valuable service and not a free hook to lure in the occasional big sale your staff might earn a bit more respect and increase their sales, and your profit, via ethical business practices. But what do I know?
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POSITIVE PRESS AND THE REGULATED INTERIOR DESIGN MESSAGE
It is rare when PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER comes across a mainstream press article that actually discusses professional Interior Design as we know it. 95% is simply innately talented interior decorators posing as qualified interior designer pabulum. 4% are articles targeting Interior Design regulations as a prime example of government over-reach and the remaining 1% is simply too […]
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Defining Our Right to Work
Or in other words….what is our “work” and do we really have a “right” to it? PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER stumbled across this missive from the recent American Institute of Architects State Government Network forum. http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/AIAB106707.pdf I can only assume that this presentation was not meant to be public knowledge and would not be surprised if the link dies…..none the less if you are quick you will note that the issue of interior designers seeking permitting rights and those who claim to be “Interior Architects” was a main topic of conversation. See slides #9-#14 My take away is that the AIA is clearly drawing a line in the sand by defining what a Registered Architect can legally design and what a non-licensed Architect can design…or get built. Actually anybody can “design” a building…..getting it permitted and constructed is the real key. I won’t even touch the issue of “Interior Architecture”…….it is lightning outside my window and the sky is cloudless. I digress. Back to the SGN network document. We, as a profession, have struggled with how to define what is that we do, where we do it and how. Ultimately much of what passes as the common definition of “Interior Design” is simply intended to distinguish us from interior decorators. When it comes to defining our actual scope of responsibility we are not quite sure. We know we should be able to submit permit documents for our own work but what exactly is that “work”? Is it anything less than 5,000 square feet as some practice legislation defines or is it interior work that does not affect base building life safety systems, building egress and tenant separation? There are several attempts to define the scope of our rightful work out there….this is not a good thing. Well why we have been trying to figure that out the National Council of Architectural Registration Board (NCARB) has provided their own answer….and we are not going to like it. To wit; “Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prevent: 1. The practice of architecture performed in connection with any of the following: (a) A detached single- or two-family dwelling and any accessory buildings incidental thereto, unless an architect is otherwise required by law or by the building authority having jurisdiction over the project; or (b) Farm buildings, including barns, silos, sheds, or housing for farm equipment and machinery, livestock, poultry, or storage, if such structures are designed to be occupied by no more than 10 persons; or (c) Any construction of particular features of a building, if the construction of such features does not require the issuance of a permit under any applicable building code and does not affect structural or other life-safety aspects of the building. ” ( http://www.ncarb.org/~/media/files/pdf/special-paper/legislative_guidelines.pdf ) So if your brain is not frozen at this point what this means is that NCARB has clearly defined our scope of practice to small scale residential, barns, silos or any construction that does not require the issuance of a permit. “Duh.- I knew that!” you might say…… My point is…if we can’t define where the line of work truly lies then we need to accept that others are going to define it for us…… Now does anybody know a good floorcovering material for a grain silo?
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PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS- MEANINGFUL ACRONYM OR JUST A BUNCH OF LETTERS
If you have visited PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER.COM before you know that I have a thing for titles and professional recognition…okay it’s an obsession….but if you are back maybe you understand the importance of this issue as it relates to “Interior Design” and our particular identity crisis. I have posted previously on the effort by the lighting design profession to establish a professional credential. Their effort is relevant in that they are a relatively young profession sprung from the rapid specialization, and relative dearth of design sensitivity, within the lighting engineering profession- much like interior design was cleaved from the well established profession of architecture…and its brief dalliance with interior decoration- I digress. I see many parallels between Interior Design’s effort to establish professional credentials (note I did not say “licensure”) and members of the International Association of Lighting Design’s (IALD) effort to distinguish themselves as a self-regulated professional domain who deserves respect and a place at the proverbial building design profession’s table. We can learn a lot from them. Conversely there are also many things that the lighting designers are doing that are far different than interior designers and our alphabet soup of professional credentials (ASID, IIDA, NCIDQ, AAHID, IDS, CID, RID)…I think they have learned what not to do from us…..but I speculate. Here is an update to the efforts of the IALD to establish the Certified Lighting Designer (CLD) credential; http://www.archlighting.com/lighting-design/report-credentialing-update_o.aspx?dfpzone=home Here is the link to the CLD website; http://cld.global/ My take away from this effort is that a strategic approach that has a singular and inclusive mission is much more impactful than one that has multiple competing/conflicting interests who seek credentials, private, public, or otherwise, purely to distinguish themselves from each other. Furthermore the CLD seeks to self-regulate in order to achieve professional respect as opposed to utilizing government regulation to gain professional respect. A subtle and oh so misunderstood nuance amongst us professional interior designers. In short theirs is an effort to “certify” and not “license”. The distinction here is critical particularly as it pertains to regulated interior designers effort to validate themselves as a peer profession with other licensed design professionals. As Elizabeth Donoff explains in her update; “The most commonly mistakenly interchanged terms are the difference between licensure and credentialing, and the distinction is a very important one to make. A license allows someone to practice a profession in a particular state and is governed by health and safety issues. Credentialing, on the other hand, is a “method for maintaining quality standards of knowledge and performance, and in some cases, for stimulating continued self improvement. Credentialing confers occupational identity.” In my bumble opinion the profession of Interior Design has spent the last 35 years trying to confer its occupational identity with a license. My hat’s off to the IALD task force for making this nuance clear and starting with establishing a clear identity based on performance and not the simply leaping for the brass ring of licensure. Unfortunately it is too late for us (the regulated profession of interior design) to go back to our roots so to speak and rethink out path to societal respect and then pursual of licensure. But it isn’t too late to think about how we proceed from this point forward. Stay tuned.
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HERE WE GO AGAIN- LOUISIANA ID LAW UNDER ATTACK
I can only assume that IIDA & ASID & IDEC & CIDA & All state Interior Design Coalitions are aware that Louisiana’s Interior Design practice law is being threatened and that they are working together to one, form a strategy to mitigate negative fallout from this campaign and two, martial a concerted legal and policy effort to address the next ID regulation debacle….because if we do not get our collective professional s**t together it will happen again…..and again….and after that…… Note I did not say save Louisiana’s practice act. ‘Fraid to say it may be too late for that. Inform yourself here; There is much more to this sordid story than the above video…I assume 2 minutes is all you can stomach. Okay so fellow regulated interior design professionals…..prepare to get slimed once again. Who’s next on this hit parade?
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