5/25 Reflection

After listening to our guest today in class, my thoughts were re-affirmed that indoor design decisions are heavily weighted to one or two areas. Although she was very concerned about the personal inhabitant health, aesthetics and appeal trumped sustainability whenever the two clashed. In my opinion, this is the problem. Our culture obviously has strong ties to aesthetics and comfort with concerns for cost as well or our homes would consist of drywall and floorboard. Our tendencies to at least want to chose and utilize sustainable indoor design materials is a step in the right direction especially when supplies start meeting our needs in this way, but cost, comfort, and aesthetic confrontations are always right around the corner.

The conflict of indoor sustainability seems to be quite evident from listening to our guest. She would love to make sustainable decisions, but absolutely not unless they fit her aesthetic plan which she has an obviously great eye and knack for. I think her thought process of design reflects the general public quite well. An "average consumer" will chose non-toxic, re-useable, energy efficient, etc. to a certain extent or breaking point which usually will be cost, comfort, and/or appeal.

My thoughts have changed from the class lecture, because I really did not have many thoughts prior to it. I have never really designed an interior space and have just dealt with my surroundings. After seeing some of the beautiful examples of our guest's work, I can definitely identify beauty and comfort when I see it, but sustainability is much harder to spot. She made it very clear what we could do to minimize toxins in our design, providing numerous examples. These were all very feasible options that met all of the criteria of an average consumer, satisfying the comfort and appeal aspects quite well in most cases. This is a feasible answer to the problem of having non-toxic/harmful clashing with comfort and aesthetics. The only concern that I and most will still have is cost. For most people, health will have to be quite an important criteria to justify the extra cost that often, but not always is associated with less-harmful/toxic material. I think health is a significant enough factor though that most will opt for it, and luckily for sustainability, the two often go hand in hand!

The only questions I have for our guest is, and I suppose she kind of answered it, but what is keeping her from making more sustainable decisions. I understand she has aesthetics to satisfy, but I did not see much compromise at all when choosing more sustainable design features such as lighting. And second, like many other sustainable topics, how can we get the general public to start realizing what we discussed in class on a mass scale that provokes significant change.