DIA Parlour Takeover: DIA’s Interior Designers campaign to highlight value, contribution and issues facing their profession
It’s time we change how our profession is viewed, defined and regulated. It’s time we articulate our value in improving the quality of life, health, safety and welfare of the public and the sustainability of our environment and future. It’s time we reach a national consensus on our contribution as building practitioners in the Australian construction industry and the consequences this has on our country’s technological innovation, economic opportunity and social equality. And it’s time we tackle the issues facing our profession and develop regulatory capacity and professional standards for consumer protection.
Ref: ABS Labour Market Insights
The interior design profession has changed and continues to change. Amid Safe Work Australia inquiries to manage the risks around toxic material specification and the upgrade of Green Building Council of Australia Interior rating tools, DIA Interior Design Practice Groups across the country are rallying the troops to work towards a unified national accreditation for interior designers to do just this. DIA Interior Designers will campaign on a Parlour Instagram Takeover for six days from Monday, 17th April, as the start of an aligned communications strategy to draw attention to this work and generate debate and discussion. A site for active exchange and dialogue, Parlour brings together research, informed opinion and resources on women, equity and architecture in Australia.
Increasingly, we are becoming more involved in the cultural production and transformation of how we live, work, and socialise as we adapt existing buildings to improve their performance or reinvent them for new use. Interior design is a highly specialised three-dimensional design activity that facilitates a ‘connection’ between people, places, and purpose. As such, it is related to, but guided by, a discrete and different pedagogy and practice to architecture.
Historically, interior design has been perceived as a marginal pursuit, primarily vocational in bias and intellectually unsubstantiated. This opinion has endured because of our alleged unprofessional and unregulated status and misogyny related to the gender of its early protagonists from the domestic elite and myopic white male perspectives. This, and the impermanence of interiors, had hindered the development of a robust history of interior design before the 21st century and shaped its consideration as a relatively new profession.
The profession has, however, come a long way from the preoccupation with domestic Western objects articulated in predominantly European period styles in the 19th to early 20th century to our present work in interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary settings, incorporating academic realms of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. As interior designers embark on global projects, they must possess the skills to research the region, its people, its culture, new technologies and sustainable initiatives required by the function of spaces.
Their website notes that Parlour is “a research-based advocacy organisation working to improve gender equity in architecture and the built environment professions” (Parlour, 2023). With a high proportion (76%) of the 17400 interior designers in Australia identifying as women and 63% of them working full time (Australian Government, 2021) and employed mainly by architectural companies, our profession has an innate understanding of the issues that professional women face in the construction industry, including pay equity, career progression, parental leave, and continuing care responsibilities, to name a few.
We are not covered under an industry award, and there is common confusion about how we are remunerated. Anecdotal evidence suggests that ‘graduate interior designers’ with 3–4-year university degree qualifications are being paid under the Miscellaneous Award at the level for advanced trade qualifications or sub-professional employees. This prevails although interior designers provide intrinsic value for clients, employers and project teams, regularly attracting projects with higher percentage fees and regular cashflows to buffer practices during downturns. In contrast to architecture, however, in which 31% of practising architects identify as women, our profession faces different gender equity issues which undermine our consideration as legitimate contributing building practitioners.
The DIA’s Parlour Instagram takeover campaign is a timely opportunity to highlight these issues and gather support for interior design to be redefined as a profession, not a vocation.
As the Australian Council of Professions defines, we are “a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards and who hold themselves out as, and are accepted by the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to apply this knowledge and exercise these skills in the interest of others”.
As construction industry professionals, and contrary to the image portrayed by popular media, we derive our income from our specific knowledge or experience, as opposed to a worker, hobbyist or amateur without formal education. (Australian Council of Professions, 2003).
The interior design profession needs accreditation to assist with issues of pay equity, professional standards, consumer safety and public education of our role and value in the construction industry. It is time to evolve the interior design profession and move forward with action. We hope the DIA Parlour Instagram takeover is a practical first step in this critical process. Please support the campaign by sharing this information more widely!
Want to be part of the conversation? Head to the DIA’s Parlour Takeover on Instagram, engage with comments and support us in creating positive change.
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Author:
Dr Natalie Wright FDIA is a Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture in QUT’s School of Architecture & Built Environment with 15 years academic experience and 20 years Interior Design practice experience gained in Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom. As a design advocate, Natalie has served as a DIA National Director (2007-2011, 2012-2014), and Queensland Branch President (2007-2010), and represented DIA at the International Federation of Interior Architects /Designers (IFI) General Assemblies (2009 & 2011). Her engaged research explores design-led educational innovation in K-12, tertiary and professional education contexts, as a framework for inclusion and adaptivity in the twenty-first century. In 2018 and 2021 she won Good Design Australia Awards for her involvement in state government team collaborations facilitating the development of design thinking expertise for education and health sector transformation.
Natalie is currently co-leading the DIA Queensland Interior Design Accreditation Practice Group with Angela Spillane FDIA and supported by DIA Fellow and working group member Scott Bagnell FDIA.