Those Opposed to ID Licensing Should Consider The Consequences
In a letter to members of the Florida interior design community, Alyce Flournoy-Jones, a licensed interior designer and a professional member of the ASID Florida NORTH Chapter offered another interesting view on the issue of state licensing to govern the design of commercial spaces completed by interior designers. Her passionate letter clearly points out the potential consequences.
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We need to get our Legislators who are reconsidering the fate of interior designers licensure in the State of Florida to look at today’s morning news of the Day Care Center fire in Mexico. If they look at it long and hard they will see a glimpse of Florida’s future without the Practice Act!
How dreadful to have to stand and listen to the cries of babies while they are being burned to death right in front of your eyes and not be able to do a thing about it! What a different outcome for all those little babies and their families if, only if, the building had been designed with the knowledge, skills and abilities of a licensed interior designer. There would be no blocked exits! No windows up so high they cannot be used as emergency egress. No inability to escape or rescue. The fire could have been extinguished and the fire retardant materials would not be toxic! There would be escape routes. There would be a completely different outcome for many lives.
Maybe we aren’t surprised! Of course Mexico is a 3rd world country, right??? Well, is that what we want Florida to become? A place where there are no informed, educated, knowledgeable, people in charge of the design of public buildings??? Do our legislators not know that we are the keepers of safety, welfare and health in our built community? What are they thinking??? This revisit.. waffling.. uninformed indecision or outright ignorance of what they are doing year after year can only be seen as a step back…a step w-a-a-y back in time when there was no awareness of how to design a building with safety first and foremost! We have come a long way and our Legislature hasn’t kept up with the progress of design and the health, safety & welfare issues that we address on a daily basis.
These people who are seeking to do away with the Practice Act in Florida, who want to be called ‘interior designers’ and who want to do the work of ‘interior designers,’ do not even know what they don’t know! They have no idea what they don’t know! They speak from a place of total ignorance and cannot know what the interior designer has learned in all the many years of required education, apprenticing and successfully completing the NCIDQ exam. They are like Swiss cheese. The holes in them are all the voids in knowledge and expertise of design. That’s their nature and they have no idea what is missing because they have always had the holes and those holes represent what they don’t know. They have no awareness of what they are talking about! They are just going after the almighty dollar!
Wake up Florida Legislature! Not only do you have the awesome responsibility of protecting today’s build environment but what you decide today will decide our tomorrows too! Are we going backwards or forwards?
Alyce Flournoy-Jones, ASID
Where is the proof that an interior designer had anything to do with that structures design, egress, material specifications, or otherwise. Does your state not have codes inspectors to govern these things?? Mine does.
I can’t speak for your practice or for your region but professional interior design traditionally addresses certain components of a built environment such as egress and material selection and specifications…. along with other elements such as lighting, way finding, indoor air quality, and many others,…. all of which work in concert with one another to enhance the health, safety and well-being of those who occupy the spaces.