Interior design: icing on the cake - Albuquerque Focus

New Mexico Business Journal, March, 1991 by Jack Hartsfield

Interior Design: Icing on the cake

They're often called the unsung heroes in the construction and real estate industry, whether it's planning from the ground up or turning a drab residence or business into a sparkling beauty.

Interior design can be the icing on the cake for a home or business, that special touch in colors and lines.

Call it atmosphere.

Interior designers and architects usually perform almost identical roles on special inside touches, but architects can no longer officially call themselves interior designers.

Interior designers today must be licensed to use the title and while architects can still do the work, they may not refer to themselves as interior designers unless they, too, hold the special license.

Terrance J. Brown, president of the 150-member Albuquerque chapter of the American Institute of Architect (AIA), says the new licensed designation for interior designers in New Mexico is about a year old.

Albuquerque also has a New Mexico chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), those with licenses to use the official title in their work and meet standards of the organization.

CArol Sorenson, president of the state chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, says there are now over 80 licensed interior designers in New Mexico who have paid their fees for the designation, many under the grandfather clause without testing.

Future licensees, however, will be tested under national standards to assure all meet top qualifications.

Sorenson emphasizes that ASID has no differences with AIA professionals, but that the interior designer license approach was instituted to protect the reputation of interior designers from fly-by-night interior decorators claiming to be qualified.

Brown notes that interior design work - whether conceived by an interior designer or an architect (who may prefer to call it space planning or some other designation) - is vital to any building or residential plan.

"Color, for instance, is very important," says Brown. "It essentially brings the building or residence together. It may result in a soft statement, or a bold statement.

"The physical shape, the interior makes a statement."

Brown says trends are reversing in what people really like today in architecture or in interior design.

At the end of World War II, the trend was to streamlined, box-like appearances for new structures - partly because of the speed and efficiency in which they could be built and partly because labor costs were rising where complicated schemes were involved.

"We're now seeing the swing back to more graceful lines and it can be done with manufactured products available today whether it's fiberglass or stained windows, whatever," says Brown.