The following article is about the knowledge sharing ‘Design Denmark’ offers to facilitate. In this interior design network, resourceful interior design professionals share their knowledge of how empathy, inclusiveness and open consciousness develop the profession’s contribution to the “3rd Industrial Revolution”, to which Jeremy Rifkin ushers with the words: “The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis”1, stating that technological progress is conditioned by an open consciousness and a global leap in empathy, causing changed habits at the individual, corporate and societal level.

Figure 1; Our global consciousness reaches from global perspectives, local neighborhood to internal affairs.

Such new habits are precisely the possibilities for the interior design professionals for growth on a personal-, company- and societal level.

Between Necessity and Curiosity

Commonly, we all experience the global crisis in various ways. Focusing on our housing situation, our living environment are too expensive, too big, too small, demanding too much repair and maintenance or they are even sick buildings. Our civilization strives for fixing our issues technologically or financially under the conditions of our current consciousness level.

– And the market recognizes this by commercializing energy storing bricks, FSC and PEFC certified wood, reducing VOC in various ways and by ecologically cleaning fluids to mention but a few.

Culturally, interior professionals experience demand for “Spiritual Wellness”, for “Curating Meaningful Lifestyles”, and for establishing “Your ‘Home-DNA’”.2

Figure 2; Spiritual wellness include periods of daydreaming, resting, or napping on the couch.

Publicly, the interior culture aims for inner development goals enabling our inner capacity to include increasingly complex environments and challenges. In Denmark we have created the additional 9 ‘be-stainability goals’3 to the 17 UN sustainability goals and globally, organizations such as the Galileo Commission or the Institute for Noetic Sciences4 inspire our interior profession to include this consciousness opening into transforming the abilities of interior professionals and the interior industry.

Industry Development and Business Development

The current technical-commercial civilization constantly seeks for gains of new business types. Adding open-consciousness business types are induced in the interior industry; that might be added sustainability goals concerning inner sustainability in the built environment or that might be private companies adding services as interior coaching.

Both the above business types already now see the light of day. In Denmark, DGNB (the equivalent to LEED or BREAM) started an additional distinction of ‘heart’ rating wellbeing.6 -and numerous interior professionals already market interior coaching services, in Denmark and internationally.

Fortunately, the content of the above-mentioned business types leaves plentiful of work.

In August 2016, the United Nations Populations Fund, addresses the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals:

“The main conclusion was that sustainable development requires a “spiritual transformation” of ourselves and the organizations we are linked with that actively extends to the societal, global, and ecological levels.” 7

Both examples of industry- and business developments rest on a societal and individual pledge for transition of psychological waste. Steen Hildebrandt, writes: 

“The more people there are on Earth, the more the amount of psychological waste grows. Not only does the amount of pollution in each individual grow – in the form of physical blockages – but the amount of projected psychological waste also grows. If population growth increases exponentially, then – one could say – the quantity of psychological waste (negative emotions, infantile substance, repressions, trauma) also grows exponentially”.8

Opening our consciousness, such waste transfer is possible to include in professional interior work and network sharing and developing knowledge amplifies the current tendencies and enables the cultural life areas to include inner values to the technological-economical shaping of society.

Culture; the Internal Affairs of Interior Professionalism

Thus, current growth opportunities for the interior industry are found in internal affairs: World view, nature perspective and self-image; meaning the outer adjustment to ecological living goes hand in hand with internal adjustments concerning empathy and inclusiveness. Raising the awareness demands developing technical terms and is validated by new methodologies of measuring.

“Man is the measure of all things: for things that are, that they are, for things that are not, that they are not”.9

We can expect to develop a deeper awareness of an abode’s materials, consumption, and systems enabling prospects for catalyzing protection, opportunities, power zones and comfort zones to those, staying in the abode.

This includes space-conscious professionals arranging the personalized interior design to guide the inhabitants’ thoughts and feelings to fortunate decisions and consequent actions, easing inhabitant’s lives. Guided validity is obtained by creating a measurement taking a critical view of prerequisites, foundations, calculation methods, assessments pursuing the desired changes in the consciousness level ratio between the abode and the inhabitant, as Steen Hildebrandt says:

“Only what can be measured can be managed”.10

Fun, Inspiring, and Useful – Please join us

The network aims for creating new tools deepening the use of interior design theory. Empathy, inclusiveness, and open consciousness will be the entry words for our fortunate work growing the interior industry. We have options for arranging workshops, study trips, working through cases etc.

1 Rifkins, J. 2010,’The Empathic Civilzation’, Polity Press
2 https://ugeavisen.dk/kolding/artikel/indretningsarkitekt-har-f%C3%A5et-travlt-efter-nedlukning-flere-vil-have-et-velindrettet-og-personligt-hjem  12-08-2021
https://www.thezoereport.com/living/is-spiritual-home-design-the-future-experts-say-yes  16-09-2021
https://www.myhomebeing.com/ 16-09-2021
https://www.instagram.com/allprace/?hl=en 16-09-2021
https://aciiid.com/spiritual-wellness-in-interior-design/ 21-05-2020
https://blog.sampleboard.com/interior-trends-2020-mindful-living-urban-dwellers/  16-09-2021
3 In Danish: Væredygtigghedsmål, https://www.vaeredygtighed.org/vaeredygtighed/ , 04-09-2022
4 https://galileocommission.org/ ,04-09-2022
5 https://noetic.org/ , 04-09-2022
6 https://dk-gbc.dk/certificering , 03-09-2022
7 http://papers.synergaia.vision/Reflection_Paper_The%20Spirituality_of_Human_Transformation_aug2016.pdf , 04-09-2022 8 2022 Hildebrandt, S., 2017 ’Vækst og bæredygtighed’, Libris, Translated by article author
9 Cite from the Greek Sophist Protagoras’ main work: ‘The Truth’
10  Hildebrandt, S., 2017 ’Vækst og bæredygtighed’, Libris, Translated by article author

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