What’s driving the $60 billion dollar interior design industry?

In September, I posed this question at ASID’s first annual State of the Industry Address, held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This was an exciting day for the interior design community as we looked back on a year of gained momentum. We can now confidently look forward to a continued industry growth, new opportunities to elevate interior design, and new ways to demonstrate the profession’s role as well as its importance to the economy.

At the American Society of Interior Designers we have kept a watchful eye on how our industry has been performing in the post-recession economy.  After a gloomy 2010 and an erratic 2011 affected by concerns about the Eurozone economy, stalemates in Congress over our national budget, and a rash of natural disasters that deflated client confidence, our industry has sustained positive, although modest, growth over the past ten months. A growth that’s trending above the major building and architecture indexes.  Current forecasts indicate that growth will continue into the first half of next year.

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Luca Nichetto, designer of the IMM Cologne’s 2013 “Das Haus” installation.

As you make plans for 2013, one of the must do’s is a visit to the IMM Cologne furniture fair. Why? It’s a great place to see strong furniture brands made in Germany. Austria, and Switzerland debuting innovative product releases. Earlier this year we saw the launch of Konstantin Grcic’s Pro chair for Flötotto that was a hit at the show.

Germany’s robust economy means that strong German furniture brands like Walter Knoll, Dauphin, and E15 continue to showcase innovative products (the fair organizers estimate that around 1,250 companies from more than 50 countries will be in attendance). And if you are on the look out for the next design wunderkind, the fair’s d3 Design Talents is among the best-curated exhibitions of young designers from around the world.

A rendering of “Das Haus” by Nichetto.

But the fair has other reasons that make it worth visiting. The LivingKitchen, which is held in odd-numbered years, is a great place to learn about the latest kitchen and bath trends. The famous engineering and precision of German luxury cars can also be found in the work of many of the country’s kitchen and bathroom manufacturers, including Miele, Hansgrohe, Gaggenau, Dornbracht, and Poggenpohl. With 160 exhibitors from 18 countries, you’ll be seeing popular kitchen trends that continue the idea of open plan kitchens, smart appliances, and the use of material combinations of ceramic, glass, stainless steel and wood.

The Torei tray tables by Nichetto for Cassina.

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Turning ten next year, the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, designed by OMA’s Rem Koolhaas in 2003, is a widely lauded building. Waxing poetic about the way the structure incorporates the train tracks that run above it, while protecting the building’s occupants from any noise or vibrations associated trains, is just one positive reaction to the well-known design.

But for me, this campus center at IIT works because it provides students and faculty with choices of where to work and hang out. Their options range from sundrenched tables to underground computer stations. Like any student center, this too contains spaces where the kids can eat, drink coffee, meet with others, and shop during their breaks. But it’s the sense of control they get that I find rewarding.

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Newport Beach, California–based interior designer Brooke Shepherdson, founder of Brooke Elizabeth Design, is experimenting with a new form of design delivery aimed at small budget, low-maintenance clients with a service option called “e-design”. With the economy in a lull and after having her first baby last year, she was looking for new ways to work from home while raising a child, so that she could continue to engage with clients who love her style but either live in New York or simply don’t require a full range of services. She realized there was an untapped market of prospective clients interested in a streamlined design process; an e-design option would be ideal for do-it-yourselfers, someone living in a remote location or anyone on a limited budget who just needs a little design help.

“People love the idea, and it makes a lot of sense in these economic times,” Shepherdson says. “I’ve found that my clients love to shop on their own, and with so many online retailers, they have the opportunity to find great items themselves, but they’ve all told me, they don’t know how to pull it all together or make the items they love fit well in their own personal space.”

In response, Shepherdson designed a custom solution: For an affordable flat fee (starting at $800), and after the client supplies photos and dimensions of the space, she delivers an inspirational design board displaying images and sketches, a scaled floor plan, furnishings selections, shopping list, and finally a step-by-step guide to assembling the space.

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AIA Technology Symposium from KPFF Cinema on Vimeo.

While attending the recent AIA Portland Technology Symposium I was inspired to think about the importance of play relative to technology’s emerging impact on the design professions. I went into the conference knowing that successful companies often foster a culture of experimentation and exploration. They encourage employees to explore tangents, push boundaries, and chase down hunches knowing that it may have little to do with how a company’s goods and services are delivered. Employees are simply asked to play and see how far they can take an idea.  Play helps you keep your finger on the pulse of innovation and connects processes to adjacent possibilities.

Presenters at the Technology Symposium came from brands like Nike, Laika, Adidas, Pixel Pool, Ziba, Intel, Lucid Design Group, ADX, showing how they use technology to Think, Make, and/or Tell.  There were almost no architects in the lineup. It wasn’t until nearly the end of the event that J. Meejin Yoon spoke and we heard from inside our profession; but in reality she is more an artist/creative problem solver than an architect. In fact, creative problem solving was the common thread that ran through the symposium.

The speakers explored the current and emerging relationship between the “creative” and technology. While I had anticipated to hear how technology can think, tell, or do without the human brain, this was not the case. The fear of technology’s power, dating back to IBM’s unveiling of the first super computer, is prevalent even among those who champion its prowess. The idea of being replaced by technology is where we, designers, get scared. The major distinction between designers and their technology is vision, and the desire to control that vision. When technology is synonymous with tool, we don’t seem so conflicted – tools are trusted to hands, vision is followed. Craft still comes from the craftsman, creativity from the creative and architecture from the architect.

The power of technology as tool is its ability to streamline design parameters in a more directed, vetted, and fitted manner, be this through structural modeling, energy modeling, rapid prototyping, BIM environments, or exploring delivery methods.  Technology pushes design forward by allowing designers to make things more quickly, from prototyping objects to exploring manufacturing processes to exploring materials.  But it also increases our ability to access  the tools and the information to use those tools, thus increasing the speed of ideation, to prototype, to creation, to marketplace by simply making it easier to get over previous hurdles.

left to right:  The Jammy!  A funky-fresh boombox (top: Leaptronic.com, bottom: Nicolle Clemetson), PICA:TBA (top: Ellen Fortin, bottom: Mitch Snyder), manufacturing tools and inspiration (Adidas)

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Long Island: The Sunrise Homeland, sponsored by the Long Island Assocation for the 1939 World’s Fair

Long Island at mid-twentieth-century, you might have heard, was a place of explosive growth. Most of this was not very interesting. Sprawl. Tract housing. Billy Joel. They came with the island’s rapid suburban development. For a brighter look at the considerable architectural benefits of the period, there’s Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 by Caroline Rob Zaleski.

The book is an erudite tour from Great Neck to Montauk through a vibrant half-century of architectural experiment, incorporating stylistic eddies from the late Prairie Style to brutalism to high modernism and hitting such curiosities as a canvas-walled home and the only Mies van der Rohe-renovated barn along the way. Yes, that’s right. The Northern State Parkway, the Southern State Parkway, and Long Island Expressway, plus all additional tendrils of Robert Moses’ road-building offered countless new prospects for residential construction in the New York market. Affluent clients rapidly seized upon the opportunity, often lured by rising waves of architectural fashion and promise.

Leonhardt house, photo courtesy of Ezra Stoller (c) Esto

Long Island Modernism is a story, in large part, of New York City wealth grafting Bauhaus and Tailesin ideas onto picturesque spots in an empty countryside, and Zaleski does an excellent job of explaining both the cultural and design background in detail. Wright’s Rebuhn house appears, as do three homes by Antonin Raymond, Wright’s collaborator on the Japanese Imperial Hotel. The volume features four homes by Marcel Breuer, six by Breuer’s sometime director of design, William Landsberg, one by his partner Hamilton Smith, and one by Jane Yu, an interior designer in the firm. Richard Neutra, early Viennese émigré and fallen Wright disciple, designed two homes. Herman Herrey, also of the German diaspora, designed two. Round the list out with works by Sert, Durrell Stone, Philip Johnson, Richard Meier, and a handful of others from an amply-interconnected modernist pantheon and suddenly you have an island worth close attention.

Rebuhn House, courtesy of the Ronald Rebhuhn Collection

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I have occasion to meet and know many fledgling interior designers and I’m convinced that the talent and drive they bring to the profession will raise the bar for the practice of design as well as the design business. Seeing so much promise and opportunity, I’m curious to know what the profession is doing to nurture this new talent. How are we working to recruit the best and the brightest, and once they’re on-board, what are we doing to keep them challenged?

To find out what it’s like for young interior designers working today, and to get their personal perspectives, a colleague and I sat down with a group whose work experience ranged from one to five years. Of the 10 designers we talked to, all are working in a variety of small, medium and large firms in the Midwest; all are graduates from the same interior design program.

When asked why they became interior designers, they agreed that they like being creative, are challenged by the work of creating environments, and enjoy the flexibility and options interior design provides.

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