Sustainability

 Introduction:

   The history of interior design is nearly 100 years old now. What began as art of embracing form and function has now taken a leap to designated profession with years of study and research.

   The term “interior design” first emerged in United States of America in early 1900s and at that the people associated with this profession had lack of knowledge and experience. But those people with their natural talent and common senses really shifted the world’s point of view towards interior decoration and interior spaces.

  The first book for interior design was published in 1913 by Else De Wolfe named as “The House of Good Taste” and Dorothy Draper was the interior designer to establish her firm in 1923.

   Couple of years later the largest professional organization, in the field of its time was founded in the year 1931. Which sooner became the hub of professional meetings and furniture shows and the organization really was a huge effort to give this field a global recognition.

   The term “interior design” might be fairly new but the profession is very old we have seen some beautiful designs over centuries such as Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Mughal Empire are worth mentioning, but it was up to craftsmen and even architects to take up this responsibility. In early 20^th century it emerged as an individual job.

Sustainability in Built Environment:

    Environment sustainability is very important and specially in our age where it has to be our core objective to be environment friendly and usage of renewable materials is getting very common.

   Northeast Summit for a Sustainable Built Environment (NESSBE) describes the key studies in the dimension of sustainability for built environment:

1. Reduction of the energy and emission in the environment.

2. Minimizing the distraction in the ecological, natural ion areas for food production.

3. Minimizing the consumption of environmentally harmful construction   materials.

4. Recycling natural resources.

5. Preventing sound and air pollution in order to protect the inhabited health.

  Minimizing of the harmful building materials that are non-recyclable or their emissions may cause pollution are the key aspects of sustainability in built environment.

  There are number of assessment tools created over the years to check the sustainability of the structure but the two most common ones used all over the world are BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

BREEAM focuses the assessments under nine main topics:

1.    Management

2.    Health and wellbeing

3.    Energy

4.    Transport

5.    Water

6.    Materials

7.    Waste

8.    Land use and Ecology

9.    Pollution

Whereas LEED evaluates under six categories

1.    Sustainable site development

2.    Water efficiency

3.    Energy efficiency

4.    Material selection

5.    Indoor environmental quality

6.    Innovation and design process

Sustainability in Interior Design:

   Interior designing is the art and science of designing a space and most importantly keeping the users in mind and their wellbeing, based on physical and psychological parameters.

   It is not just how a finish or material will appear in the finished product but how the materials will behave after application and over the years, this practice can be termed as sustainability. It requires a through research of materials individually and their specifications.

Sustainable interior design can be defined as a design in which all the elements, materials and finishes are selected keeping an emphasis on the health of the user as well as minimizing the threat of hurting environment.

Sustainable Materials:

    Materials that have negligible effects on the environment are known as sustainable materials which includes renewable and recyclable materials mostly.

    Its not an easy job because every setting and every space demands different materials according to its functions, for example materials used in bar or café cannot be used in hospital throughout due to sterilization purposes.

   The main feature in selecting a material is its strength, what is the load bearing capacity of the materials is? Concrete and steel are by far one of toughest materials and very hard to replace but there are options available in timber and rock if we consider natural elements.

   One of the most important aspect before selecting a material is considering its recycling potential, for example most of the natural elements have the tendency to be recycled such as wood but compounds like concrete or plastic have high possibility to end up in a landfill or oceans. Now not all the materials which end up in the land fill are harmful for environment, but the list is very short.

   There are ways and procedures now available to recycle artificial materials mainly like plastic and Styrofoam but the problem is the finished product either wont have that aesthetic appeal or maybe not enough strength but it will be a good option to start using materials like this for smaller elements, another draw back is that the procedure is time consuming and expensive but that seems to be the only option as these artificial elements are non bio-degradable.

    Another thing that is consider in the selection of the material is the emission of toxic gases while in the production as well as after the application which can be very harmful specially for the users and cause number of different symptoms.