Interior design ways of knowing: Embracing unpredictability

Interiors constantly change through inhabitation. As such, interior designers value a person's post-project agency as much as a participatory design agency. We must not only be comfortable with this ambiguity but embrace subjectivity within social-cultural contexts as the material with which we operate. This way of knowing, that the process is the product, has not always been the norm in built environment disciplines that primarily concern themselves with form. A simple case is presented to demonstrate the complexity of time, space, and context that impact a typical design project and reflections of the role of designers in the process. The process and reflection demonstrate a human-oriented rather than object-oriented worldview that accommodates flexibility for unpredictability inherent in interior design practice.