Creating effective space
Dear Raphael, Thank you, Sir, for the short but very educative pieces you drop every now and then courtesy my favourite weekend newspaper, The Mirror. I am an interior designer, a beginner though, and I have had some challenges managing the space of the few clients that I have had so far.
Advertisement
I tend to believe that my deliveries, though good and quite pleasant, are not the best I should offer. I do apply all the technical knowledge I have, the principles of design and all the related applications to whatever work I have to do.
What can I do to create or manage client’s spaces effectively and efficiently?
Wisdom, Tema.
Dear Wisdom, Every designer’s blank canvas is a certain space committed to him or her. The homeowner has no option than to hand over his/ space to the designer, just as a patient commits his or her life into the hands of a medic.
Your success is your recommendation, because space is an essential commodity, and has to be treated thoughtfully with care and respect.
Space should be given a rightful meaning and significance in any structure as any of the components.
Frank Lloyd Wright, among other professionals, considered space intrinsic to an interior – it is the resource that is provided for human use, life should go on within it. Interior spaces must be fulfilling and satisfying.
The growing interest in interior environment of the past decades has brought the interior designer to a deep concern with the numerous complicated problems that arise in creating spaces that satisfy equally the functional, aesthetic and practically the spiritual needs of its occupants.
In planning an interior environment, the designer has to relate to the space in which his/her client spends his/her time.
The designer’s anticipation of this relates to his/her sensitivity to the immediate surroundings.
As the designer moves through each day, he or she seeks to develop his/her awareness of everything he/she is exposed to, especially buildings, objects and spaces and more particularly as they relate to people.
Such awareness is not instinctive; the designer’s eye has to be trained to look out for certain elements basically in answer to questions such as:
• How does each space or object in it fulfill its aesthetic or functional purpose?
• Is the proposed design or final design satisfying to behold?
• What influences are reflected?
• What kind of human reactions does the space rationally portray?
• Why does one space or building or environment delights, while another brings boredom and another goes completely unnoticed? What is in the other and not in the other?
• What is there that should be admired or criticised?
• Is there total pleasantness?
Many people are often unaware of the effects of design on their environment and do not even realise that it is possible to control and improve their surroundings.
Disciplined attention, accompanied by intuitive awareness, develops a kind of perception in a designer that can help him understand the surrounding within which he/she finds himself to realise the potential of such an environment or space.
