New Academic and Professional Challenges in Interior Design: Minimizing the Schism
The boundaries between creative thinking and business sense are thickening in the profession of interior design. We often find ourselves compromising one to the other. Such conflict is often accentuated by the increased emphasis in academic programs on abstract creativity without venues and connection to the real world.
In reverse, practices are more and more inclined to practicality, flashiness and cost reduction. This paper addresses the issues emanating from this conflict. While academic programs lack coherence, interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration between various programs and industries, professionals are in desperate need for regulation and legislation.
More than ever, the challenges that face both the academic and the professional world should come under scrutiny. However, this study will review and examine recent literature about the ongoing debate and critique found in various circles, which seek to minimize this schism. Especial attention will be given, throughout this paper, to what should students expect, and to what design process to adopt and most of all under what academic vision should all the above fall, in order to push research in that direction.
El-Khoury Assouad, Nada, and Giovanni De Paoli. 2013. Mobility & design. Paris: Europia Productions.
