Contract - March 2011 - (Page 28)

practice global consensus An international group of interior designers and architects makes history in New York with the first global declaration establishing the importance of the interiors profession to the built environment By Jennifer Thiele Busch The International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI)—the sole international federating body for interior architecture and design organizations that acts as an international forum for the exchange of ideas in interior design education, research, and practice around the world— recently hosted a major symposium to define the relevance, responsibility, identity, and value of interior design from a global perspective. IFI Design Frontiers: The Interiors Entity (DFIE) Global Symposium—cosponsored by the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and supported by the Museum of Arts and Design—was held in New York on February 17-18 and culminated in the signing of the first IFI Interiors Declaration. The gathering and declaration are considered to be an historic event by the IFI executive board, including Constance Ann (Singapore), Shashi Caan (United States), Ronnie Choong (Malaysia), Iria Degen (Switzerland), Iris Dunbar (United Kingdom), Luz Maria Duran (Mexico), Suzan Globus (United States), Farida Kamber (United Arab Emirates), Joo Yun Kim (Korea), and Joe Pettipas (Canada), and past president and special advisor to the board, Madeline Lester (Australia). The Symposium was endorsed by leading national design groups and U.S. associations, including the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA); the European-based Cumulus International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media; the Interior Design Educators Association (IDEA), comprising universities throughout Australia and New Zealand; the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC), active in the United States and Canada; Interior Educators (IE), a new organization of academics representing well-established interior architecture/design courses from across the United Kingdom; and the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) in the United States. One hundred symposium delegates from 30 countries included some of the world’s leading design authorities, innovators, business leaders, and strategic thinkers. IFI president Shashi Caan opened with an overview of the year-long global research process (in which almost 80 countries were involved), followed by reports from think tank leaders covering Hong Kong, Germany, Turkey, Canada, Argentina, the United States, Brazil, and Russia. Participants were divided into eight task force groups to address fundamental questions raised about the interiors discipline: value, relevance, responsibility, business, culture, knowledge and identity. Guided primarily by the results of the DFIE Global Survey, an IFI initiative carried out over the course of 2010, and overviews provided by assigned “investigators,” each DFIE task force enthusiastically and passionately discussed, debated, and arrived at points of group consensus, and reported back to the entire delegation. With these consensus points further refined and transformed into a comprehensive statement by an outcomes declarations committee, the Interiors Declaration was presented and unanimously approved by the symposium participants. Now IFI will bring together DFIE Phases I and II (with the Global Survey being Phase I and the Symposium being Phase II) into an all-inclusive publication (Phase III) for worldwide dissemination using a wide variety of media outlets. Phase IV, Design Policy and Impact, will encourage the outcomes to be put into practice by professionals, educators, and institutions. Specific findings will be brought to the attention of national and regional governments, possibly in the form of suggested/draft design policy, tailored to suit each circumstance. The final phase of DFIE, named the IFI Interiors Biennial, is intended to visualize this core knowledge, actualizing the global consensus reflected in the IFI DFIE Interiors Declaration. Scheduled to coincide with IFI’s 50th anniversary in 2013, the Interiors Biennial will seek to promote, through a series of events and manifestations, the relevance of interior architecture/design and its intrinsic role in society by inspiring and informing designers and the general public alike. In addition to the participation of the two well-recognized New York museums, the IFI DFIE Global Symposium was supported by MTV Networks, Contract, Metropolis, and officeinsight (with the editors in chief of each publication involved with various aspects of DFIE Symposium outreach, coordination, and programming). The event would not have been possible without the generous support of leading international design practices such as HOK, HLW, Iria Degen Interiors, Perkins+Will, and The SC Collective, and from members of the IFI Resource Council, industry partners, and sponsors: Alape, Amerlux, Bentley Prince Street, Faram, Haworth, Humanscale, InsideOut International, InterfaceFLOR, Kimball Office, Knoll International, Milliken, Montreal International, Objeto Brasil, Shaw Industries, Steelcase, Structure Tone, Teknion, Walter Knoll, and 3Form. Visit www.contractmagazine.com/ifiglobalsymposium to read the full declaration. For more information, please contact IFI secretary general, Deirdre Gould: secretary@ifiworld.org; or visit www.ifiworld.org. 28 contract march 2011 www.contractdesign.com http://www.contractmagazine.com/ifiglobalsymposium http://www.ifiworld.org http://www.contractdesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - March 2011

Contract - March 2011
Contents
Editor’s Note
Industry
Resources: Design Collaborations
Focus: This Little Light of Mine
Practice: Global Consensus
Green: Thinking Inside the Box
Poetry Lessons
Community Asset
Book Light
Reel Genius
Fresh Start
A Tree Saved in Brooklyn
Designers Rate: Guest Seating
Sources
Ad Index
Perspectives

Contract - March 2011