Privacy by Design
by Wendy Croix
Interior Design School Review Columnist
You want to be a designer. Your interiors look spectacular. Better school yourself in privacy as well as colors and style, though. It isn't just practicality. It's the law.
Privacy. Whether you design commercial interiors for businesses, schools, or hospitals, or whether you design residential interiors for families, you'll have to think twice about the relationships among spaces, sights and sounds.
Private Places in Shared Spaces
Designers of business interiors must weigh aesthetic concerns against privacy concerns, understanding where and how owners interact with competitors, clients, and the public. Where will sensitive data be stored? Which offices must be locked? Protecting client information or corporate secrets isn't optional; it's the law. That said, important family document should be guarded with the same care.
Unseen and Unheard
Who has access to which information comes down to sight and sound. Creative interior designers can make privacy in public spaces with portable screens, with the positioning of work cubicles, and with careful direction of traffic flow. Acoustic tiles, carpeting and window-coverings can muffle sounds, protecting workers and residents from noise and intrusion. Thoughtful placement of electronics and communication devices and judicious positioning of computer monitors keeps information private. In residential city spaces, where homes and businesses so often co-exist, privacy can be particularly challenging to the interior designer.
Privacy Needs Assessment
Case studies in the design of public interiors make privacy issues easy to understand. For a crash course in privacy, school yourself at the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) on-line resource center. You'll find case studies of a public library, a law firm, the Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Environmental Protection Agency that detail privacy problems and their solutions.
About the Author
Wendy Croix, Ph.D. is a freelance writer, cultural critic and university professor. In her twenty years as a professional educator, Wendy has guided hundreds of students toward the careers of their dreams.
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