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Some believe it’s decorating or planning or visualising and some believe its fashion.
In fact, true commercial Interior Design is a combination of the following.
It is firstly a study of clients’ real requirements on a business and professional level. ‘Requirements to succeed.’
Understanding how to capture a business pitch to market. What Unique Selling Points (USPs) it’s creating and offering and how to exploit this.
Businesses and Professionals are developing these strategies as part of their business planning in today’s growing competitive world. A quality Commercial Interior Designer understands and picks up on these as the core of the brief for the Interior Design Solution.
Secondly, it is an ability to actively listen. Listen to the real requirements of the business and/or the professional offer. The solution must be based on these business requirements.
Designers sometimes impose a solution on a business based on the designers’ requirements to create a fashion statement.
An accountable solution is answerable to the true requirements of a commercial or professional offer to the market. The design should always appeal to the target market. The solution tailored to exercise a feeling or impression.
The question to ask is ‘Does my practice reflect my beliefs and does it express and amplify a uniqueness we want to express about our practice into the futures?’. Your Next, your designer must understand your industry.
Apart from the technical requirements for your industry, the knowledge of which is a must, your designer should have an intimate understanding of the development of your industry’s perceived and real offer to your market. Not only the history of your industry and the market’s perception of your industry but also an involvement in where your industry is heading.
A solution without these considerations will have varying degrees of acceptance by your market. A solution within these bounds of knowledge can push the envelope of acceptance without being divorced from historical cues. This natural progression of your industry’s offer to the market can only be done from within an understanding of these historical accepted cues related to your industry.
Your Designer must be able to make the most of your space available.
Planning is not lines on graph paper for your fit out contractor to build off. With escalating costs of floor space today and into the future, it is paramount that every millimeter of space is utilised to its fullest.
Perception of space is something that good designers understand and is able to portray using design skills including colour and texture and amplifying this with knowledge of lighting lux levels and light colour temperature. Furniture and fitting selection and design can close down or give the perception of space as required. Design tools such as these are used to manipulate the perception of space in line with the desired offer.
Finally your designer must be able to implement your design for you.
The myriad of processes and hurdles faced when implementing an interior design solution can sometimes detract from the initial concept. They can cost you time and money. The essence of the offer can easily be compromised or lost when dealing with a separate designer and fit out contractor with thirty years of commercial interior design and specialising in dental over the last eight, we know what works and what doesn’t.
The one stop shop enables the essence of the offer to be shared between the design team to the construction team. The knowledge of operational, technical and business requirements for each practice is automatically shared to all in a continual and growing manner without re-education of the basics on each project. The interpretation of the drawings is never in question.
Our experience has shown that in every case a client’s stress levels and required involvement are reduced dramatically with this option. The project is therefore not divided and perpetuates with the same point of contact. This is truly the way of all future business built environment solutions.
Geoff Raphael, Design Director of Medifit Pty Ltd, national design and construction organisation for dental, medical, specialist and allied health practices.
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