5/25 Initial Thoughts

Balancing appeal, comfort, and non-harmful materials seems to be a generally hard thing to do. Often, when we design indoor spaces, we focus on one of these aspects, and go full force at doing the best we can achieve the objective given our resources and parameters. For example, when I think of an apartment, my personal goals would be comfort at an affordable price. Appeal would be a small part of my objective, but color or style matching would probably be the extent of the beauty I would design a space for especially on a typical, "tight" college budget. In another space, such as a newborn baby's room in a new family home, non-toxic paint and child-friendly materials will surely be at the heart of the design.

To illustrate my point, I've come across a variety of indoor spaces, with no two being for the same purpose. Often times, the three characteristic categories will overlap depending on the use and available resources such as space, cost, etc. One thing I have noticed, is that only until recently have I come across "sustainable" indoor spaces incorporating non-toxic materials. I think design focus has been so often on beauty and function with cost being a very limiting factor, that non-toxic materials have even existed. Recently though, studies and material has been circulated linking toxins in the paints we use everyday for wall coverings with cancer causing agents, etc. And in typical American fashion, most consumers, regardless of their knowledge or even if they knew what a toxin in paint was, feared the worst, jumped on the bandwagon and started demanding non-toxic wall covering paints, so producers answered the call and created alternatives.

I supposed when I think of indoor design, my thoughts specifically turn to furniture, decoration, wall/floor coverings, etc. I'm not all that sure what can be done indoors that reflects the sustainability we can design outside of our homes and buildings. A first start though, would be to not use materials that do contain harmful agents, have to be shipped half-way across the world, or will end up in a landfill should we need to re-design or dispose of anything.