INTERIOR DESIGN MEETS ARCHITECTURE Below: A gallery space showcasing sustainably made pieces of furniture
ourselves with. Each job that we undertake is a golden opportunity to make spaces better; to function more efficiently and to become more beautiful and as a profession we should grab each one and take it beyond the expectations of our clients. Everything we choose and install has some impact on the world beyond. It is our choice whether we are going to accept responsibility for our decisions, our actions and actually work at minimising this impact, for the good of all. It’s not easy and we’re going to have to work a little bit harder to achieve this, but then these are in many ways changing times. Fortunately creating low impact “eco interiors” is getting easier, as so much of the hard work is being done by suppliers and manufacturers. It’s only our creativity and misconceptions that are blocking us; the days of worthy, unsophisticated sustainable spaces are long gone.
The trick of course, is ensuring that it doesn’t impact on our businesses, or of course the end design for the client.
“This balance between technology, nature and vintage that allows us to create low energy spaces, that age well, without the toxins yet also have character and identity to match.”
For me it’s all about balance,
a balance of the three elements that make up the Eco Chic style; Technology, Nature and Vintage. Each element has a valuable functional and aesthetic role to play.
Technology has the ability to
create interiors that reduce their use of basic resources; that’s energy (either gas or electricity) or water. Technology also offers us a fantastic palette of cutting
edge materials; they may be made with cellulose polymers or from finely processed recycled materials. As a designer it’s always a fantastic opportunity to play, use and explore their possibilities. Cutting resource use makes sense in plenty of ways, and a good example is in the use of low energy, long life LED lighting. Not only will an LED down light last up to 50,000 hours, over that time it will use around nine watts of electricity. Ok so they can be more expensive, but compare that to a traditional halogen down lighter which may last for only 4000 hours and over that time use 40 watts of electricity as well as producing excess heat build up which so often needs to be dealt with, and has fire risk implications. It is up to us to consider the whole life span, energy use, maintenance time and cost, and suddenly low energy stacks up very cost effectively. It is this long term
| INTERIOR DESIGN YEARBOOK | 2012 | 129
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41