On May is celebrated every year the World Interiors Day.
The theme chosen in 2021 by the International Federation of Architects and Interior Designers was “Design as a global conversation”.
It was certainly a prophetic choice, considering the global approach to which the pandemic has accustomed us just this year.
Founded in 1963 and structured as a federation of all organizations of architects and designers, the IFI is an important platform for global exchange and training.
Thus, on its website, the federation proposed to celebrate this day by proposing the adoption in each city of the “Ifi Interiors Declaration”.
A declaration that presents itself as a “mission” to spread global “values”, shared in unity by the world of design.
First presented in New York in 2011 at the “Design Frontiers: The Interiors Entity (DFIE) Global Symposium”, the declaration was a novelty and had been approved in principle by a hundred delegates from thirty countries. The declaration contains many “hot” topics on the global political agenda.
“We use space responsibly”, the declaration states.
“We practice our profession,” it continues, “with the greatest respect in order to use the world’s economic and natural resources in a sustainable way”.
And finally: “We design for the health, safety, well-being and needs of all. Humanity is our ultimate customer, for whom we design.”
INTERIOR DESIGN IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD
The declaration, which also refers to “human and environmental ecology”, continues with another interesting purpose.
“In a global world, interior design and architecture – it is argued – must play a role in facilitating the maintenance of cultural diversity”.
And it is here that we ask ourselves: in the relationship between space and us, is there a “global” answer?
Globalization helps the circulation of ideas, improvements, avoids isolation and cultural closure.
But it inevitably standardizes reality and culture.
With globalization, cultural reference models, whether we like it or not, progressively diminish.
The natural process of multi-sector macro-sizing that is globalization, has already accustomed us to organizations and decisions on a global scale.
For this reason, the same declaration includes valuable content considered as absolute and global, even if they are not.
Indeed, one of the first sentences of the declaration states: “It is in the nature of Humanity not only to use spaces, but to fill them with beauty and meaning”.
But it immediately leads to a question: “Why? Why do we do it?”
“In spaces that are important to us, we experience not only a sense of place, but a sense of who we are and what we can be”, the declaration notes.
What is there between us and space?
What connects us to the place where we are born, to its landscapes, to the house in which we live our whole lives, to the one we build for our future?
Are we also a little part of the place where we are born and the things we surround ourselves with?
If so, does a global declaration of design values make sense?
Aren’t these values the result of the interaction between places, spaces, values and people in their specificities?
Perhaps the philosophy of interior design lies hidden right in the answer to these questions.
Emmanuel Raffaele Maraziti
