“Status: relative rank of heirarchy in people’s mind” Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

Status has been and still is an important aspect of human surroundings and behaviors since the beginnings of civilizations.

What is the purpose and role of status in our environment? Why is it important to people? What does it contribute to the advancement of civilization and the betterment of day-to-day living?

Is status of merit?

Status may be assigned to almost any thing thus directed. Most often it is associated with costs, rarity, location, history, lineage, intelligence, education, quality, snobbery, arrogance, et cetera.

If one chooses to go the status route for residential interiors, the most important aspects are the quality levels of creativity and the quality of materials used. Other aspects can be a part of or added to the manifestations when appropriate.

In all things, be true and real.

Who, what, when, where, and why determines status?

Food for thought.

People, as adults, go through various stages in their requirements for the sizes of their residential environments.

These different phases may be affected by economics, current requirements, the market, availability, age, or personal life styles. All of which will probably change many times over the years in one’s life.

Currently, there are movements in the market for smaller residences for those in the market for their first home purchase, to provide more available housing for spaces available, especially in urban situations, and for some older home owners who find themselves in the “empty nest” phase of their lives.

One hundred and eighty degrees from these people are those who desire larger residential spaces. Perhaps because of more children, more than one generation living in the same residential spaces, or because they want to move into more convenient, functional, or spacious environments.

For all sizes of residential spaces, the principles of aesthetics, functional requirements, and the laws of physics still apply.

The most important aesthetic consideration in sizing for all residential environments, regardless how large or small, is proportions. The furnishings of a residential environment should be proportionally designed and manifest for the spaces in which they are used.

How excellent are the proportions in your living environment?

In these changes, as always, the quality of manifestations should be as high as possible.

Food for thought.

Creation: “The act of making, creating, or inventing, to bring into existence.” Webster’s Dictionary

It is the quality and quantity of creating that determines the aesthetic level of a designed residential interior.

It is not the costs involved. rarity of items used, scheduling, locations, names, status, popularity, materials used, resources used, et cetera which determines the aesthetic results.

It is how these, and all of the other aspects of a project, are put together that determine aesthetic results.

Having the finest cooking facilities in the world and the best ingredients in the world does not make a delicious meal.

It how these food stuffs are prepared, cooked, and served that make the delicious meal.

The same concept is true for designed residential interiors. Using imagination, functions, principles of aesthetics, out of the box thinking, forward thinking, creativity, and intelligence for the doing of a residential interior manifests the highest level of aesthetics.

If in the eating, which last for a few minutes, of food stuffs you want that which is the most appealing and pleasurable, would it not be of the same principle to have your residential interior environment, in which you spend hours each day, the most beautiful?

What is the creative level of where you live? How does it affect your quality of existence?

Food for thought?

No residence is complete with out a kitchen sink.

It’s a basic necessity for the activities of cooking, eating, drinking, and cleaning of foods and objects used in the processes.

How can the kitchen sink be used for financial and environmental advantages as well as being convenient?

Think of what is involved in the consumption of bottled water. From beginning until plastic bottle is discarded. The manufacturing of containers and water, transportation, packaging, consumption, resources, and distribution of products and of empty containers. What effects do all of these processes have on our environment from chemical reactions to air pollution to landfills. How much do all of these activities cost financially?

All for a drink of water.

With a water filtering system at the kitchen sink all of the negative aspects associated with bottled water can be eliminated.

Money is saved. Resources are saved. The environment is saved.

Is it not worth such a positive and desirable activity to maintain the planet which is our home?

Food for thought.

As times change, new inventions come into daily life, younger generations become a more important part of society, and different life styles become more prominent. These differences are reflected in the standards and ways of living and working in a culture.

Such is what is happening these times in this United States of America.

With the prominence of computers and more variations in social, economic, educational, cultural, population diversity, life styles, and different generations less conforming, such changes are becoming more popular and accepted as a reflection of our current culture.

What started as a casual day at work has become more popular and is now the standard in many businesses.

The clean shaven male is no longer the given and facial hair is a popular fashion.

The most often worn clothes for men, women, and children are becoming increasingly more casual with more emphasis on comfort and function than style and fashion.

This trend is also becoming a part of current residential living. There is a change to less formal styles, uses of spaces, and ways of day-to-day living, and fewer concerns for what was important to previous generations.

Societies and cultures have reflected occurring changes since the beginning.

Unfortunately, many people have allowed current changes to lower quality, intellectual, and aesthetic levels by showing little or no interest in their residential interior environments.

Casual does not necessarily and should not mean sloppy, poor quality, careless, by chance, or slovenly when it comes to personal appearance, clothes, business, life styles, and one’s residential interior environment.

Like water, one’s personal taste finds it’s own level.

What is the quality, intellectual, and aesthetic level of your tastes? What does it say about you? How does it affect the results of your living?

Food for thought.

“The encounter with the aesthetics is the most ‘ingessive’ transformative summons available to human experiencing.” George Steiner

To ingest intangibly aesthetically is to experience inside a feeling of beauty, wholeness, awesomeness, joy, and completeness with life as being “in the zone” on the same level as sexual and spiritual manifestations without sensual stimulation.

What is the action of a purposely full life, if not the goal of life itself, if not to experience being at the highest and greatest degree?

Where are you in experiencing life as such?

What is your level of consciousness here?

What do you want and seek here and how important is such to you?

What efforts, or non-efforts, are you making in your life for your purposes in living?

How does the quality and level of aesthetics in your residential interior environment affect these experiences?

Food for thought.

In previous writings I have said that the use of art in residential interiors designs is much the same as the use of herbs and spices in foods and cooking.

Art is not just an object placed in the aesthetic composition of a residential interior space.

Now, more benefits have come to light. Recent studies have shown that mentally unwell persons have behaved better and get well sooner in an art included environment.

Children growing up in an environment with art are nurtured more toward the beauty, sensitivity, emotional, intellectual, thinking, and analytical aspects of life.

The intellectual experience of art takes place not only when the viewer seeks to realize, comprehend, appreciate, and enjoy what the artist was attempting to do or say in their works but also what the artist didn’t say or do in their works.

For the emotional or psychological aspects of an artist’s work what thoughts, feelings, reactions, et cetera does the viewer have? How does the viewer connect with the artist’s work? What is communicated? Or not communicated? What is the viewer’s intuitional and/or gut reactions to viewing the artist’s works?

Probably, most importantly, what creativity, imagination, intelligence, talents, skills, principles of aesthetics, and materials did the artist use in creating the work of art? What is the overall quality of manifestation of every thing the artist was doing in each created work?

Each individual person is, of course, different and has various positions and view points of which all are valid and of merit in life and in the reactions to works of art. One size, or one reaction, or one interpretation does not fit every one.

In addition to the aesthetics of art in a residential interior environment, you can now look for the other aspects and raise yourself to a higher level of the total experience. After all, isn’t that a big part of what life is about – improving and raising the quality of our life’s experiences?

Food for thought.

With younger generations gradually coming into adult life in significant numbers for living spaces and businesses, there is an increased movement toward casualness in their chosen style of living and working and shopping.

A gradual change from the old to the new has always taken place in all aspects of life for growth during the ages.

This change is currently more prevalent in business interiors that residential interiors because the purposes of businesses is to produce things and provide services which is determined in today’s market place with its demographics and constantly changing conditions by new inventions and discoveries, economic conditions, costs, efficiency, popularity and life styles.

Status and hierarchy, which will probably be a part of some professions and businesses for times to come, are not important in most of the new and upcoming and changing enterprises of today’s time in which the emphasis for interiors is on flexibility, diversity, comfort, convenience, spaciousness, excellent options and conditions for natural and man made light, a relationship between interiors and exteriors, and emotional and psychological feelings of belonging and involvement.

For residential interiors, the situation is just the opposite. There is a strong tendency to retain and continue the ways, life styles, and designs of the past. Status and hierarchy play a large important role in how houses are designed and built along with landscaping, locations, et cetera. Just drive around any residential neighborhood and count the houses that are not built using past period designs.

While there are some movements in residential interiors toward more casual living and spaces, such has not reached the level as for business interiors or become as prevalent in the current building of houses.

One can have a casual life style in a more restricted traditional environment, but when the interior design and life style are of the same ambiance, it is more comfortable, convenient, deeper, and more enjoyable.

We are more emotionally involved in our residential living spaces than in our working spaces which is, of course, a major factor in choosing how we manifest both of them.

Human behavior is very complex and made of many variable and various elements.

For the best end result in all of human behavior, “to thine own self be true” which can also be essential for your business and living environments.

Food for thought.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Winston Churchill

The primary goal for any residential interior design project should be long term lasting results and not quick, easy, inexpensive, or short term results.

If results are not the only goal, then any residential interior design project is of no merit.

Some people are of the position that a designed residential interior project is exclusively a financial transaction and that’s all they want or need to find happiness.

It matters not the scheduling, costs, timing, materials, workmen, size, quality, et cetera, if there is no beauty manifest, it is but a business transaction.

If you eliminate, change, compromise, cut costs, et cetera and lower the quality and aesthetic bar to complete something by a certain time, that result is there permanently, you will have to live with it, and the best designed results will be missing.

A well designed quality residential interior space can last for decades.

As such, is it not worth the resources to make it complete and the best it can be?

If the food doesn’t taste good, are you going to eat it? It may be nutritious and healthy, but eating it will not be enjoyable.

Do you want to spend years of your life in such a place?

Quality lasts.

Food for thought.

In all types and forms of media, much is made, written, and presented of the activities, sayings, choices, et cetera, above and beyond their professional accomplishments, of those we ordinarily call celebrities.

Often times, in the area of human perception and behavior, there is a tendency to equates success in one area of a person’s life as validation for success in other areas of said person’s life.

Many publications, presentations, and proclamations of those who identify themselves as authorities or experts or knowledgeable take, with confidence, this position. The advertising and entertainment industries are well known for doing such.

“It ain’t so.”

And all of the glamour, glitz, public relations, and talking in the world does not make it so, true, or real.

The residences of royalty, politicians, entertainers, athletes, the wealthy, and others are often photographed, presented, and proclaimed as outstanding examples of residential interior designs.

The laws of physics and the principles of aesthetics are not affected by one’s personal accomplishments.

Look at, analyze, appreciate, and enjoy for what something is. Not for who did it. It should be of quality and merit to stand on it’s own.

Food for thought.