Often, function and aesthetics find themselves on a collision course. Many aspects of interior space design contain junctures where functional requirements threaten to compromise and drive aesthetic possibilities. How a particular piece of the vision looks in one's mind simply may not, after all, be achievable in the existing base environment.
Sometimes there are unexpected changes. Sometimes your designer has to point out a problem that has limited answers – often answers that exclude something the client wanted. And here comes the "Why not?"
Innovation, creative solutions, improvisation and essential, basic skill and talent can usually overcome the square-peg-in-the-round-hole reality of a difficult configuration or a seemingly unchangeable factor.
But, once in a while, when that dilemma involves factors that cannot be changed at all, or cannot be modified easily and economically, your designer is confronted with a complex communication and management issue.
The glitch could involve architectural and structural configurations. It could be about compliance and restrictions. There could be problems related to weather, utilities, access -- or cost that would compromise agreed-to budget parameters. There might have been an error on plans that came with the site. Unknowns can emerge; the list of possibilities is long.
The most important challenge is communicating clearly with a client who may not see, like or understand the reasons and answers to their "Why not?"
In addition to a client's expressed preferences and their designer's desire to produce what that client wants, the designer must be concerned with consequences that may not be immediately obvious to their client.
If your designer and other professional participants in your project seem to be resistant and insistent about something where you have opposing views (or feel you have been blind-sided) it is very important to pause and go over it again! Remember, your professionals have a lot of collective experience. They know what they are doing, and how it may impact you and your project.
Unfortunately, when such conflicts erupt about an unwanted or unavoidable factor, it may be interpreted as resistance to your preferences in favor of the designer's preferences. That conclusion would contradict a cardinal rule of most legitimate professionals: that the end result must be as the client wishes! Of course, the exception would be if the client wishes something that just can't or won't work, for clear and important reasons.
As your project begins to emerge from vision to finished reality, intense ownership of that vision increases! You may feel the need to dig your heels in and become unreasonably resistant to any change or digression from the original path. That's when it is time to re-group, relax, review the "Why not?" and return to cooperative communication in the best interest of the best end result.
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book and Instagram at Business Design Services.
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