Mix Roundtable: What does it mean to create inclusive commercial spaces?

This article first appeared in Mix Interiors #229

Words and moderated by: Harry McKinley

Defining what inclusivity means is crucial.

Much like sustainability, ‘inclusivity’ has become a pillar of contemporary commercial design. But for an industry that deals as much in practicalities as ideas, it’s also a term that has arguably become woolly and ill-defined. Does it simply mean ‘to include’? Perhaps. But our assembled experts agree: concepts that leave seemly limitless bandwidth for interpretation are often unhelpful and not particularly productive. They certainly don’t create a framework that lends itself to measurable outcomes or benchmarks for success. Definitions, then, are key and it’s important as an industry to reach consensus on what it is we’re discussing, how to apply it and why it matters.

“Inclusivity is ultimately about affording people opportunities and giving them a voice, with regards to how spaces are designed and how they work,” offered the National Autistic Society’s Richmal Maybank. “It’s about fairness,” continued Design Council’s Roland Karthaus, “and so much flows from that.”

For colour expert Justine Fox, inclusivity means ‘giving everybody a chance’. “For too long we’ve designed spaces that are there to be looked at and not necessarily to be accessed by as many people as possible,” she explained. While for Francesca Mutch, Corstorphine & Wright, creating a ‘sense of belonging’ is fundamental.

Agreeing, Tarkett’s Shaz Hawkins deployed an apt Verna Myers quote: “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.”

Designers have a responsibility to seek out underrepresented perspectives.

“The common saying is, ‘you don’t make a case for building a bridge by counting the number of people who swim across the river’,” explained Karthaus. “That means, in design, asking: who isn’t in the room? Who is not swimming the river but needs a bridge, that we might not be aware of? We mostly set out terms for success based on what we already see happening, not what we don’t see.”

It’s a disruptive notion; one that challenges established thought and forces the commercial interior design industry to better consider – to better include – those otherwise left out or left behind.

“It’s here that we sometimes confuse empathy with lived experience,” detailed Maybank, “and that lived experience is vitally important. People who have a different way of thinking are often excluded, as well as those with different needs, even from an access perspective. In terms of what would help, involving people from different backgrounds, with different needs, in the design process from the outset is key.” Does Maybank believe this is happening enough and are designers consulting organisations like her own enough, to better understand this diversity of need? “Honestly, no, it isn’t happening enough.”

Can a space be all things to all people? Probably not.

One of the trickiest aspects of inclusive design is catering to complex, multitudinous and even competing needs. When considering aspects as distinctive as neurodiversity and disability, or even gender and age, from a design perspective surely something has to give?

“You just can’t be everything to everybody,” said Fox, whose own work is highly tied up in how colour can communicate themes and in how it makes us feel. There are commonalities, but she believes that, inevitably, some priority in design has to be given to who or what most needs to be served.

“Speaking for designers, we have to be pragmatic,” emphasised Perkins&Will’s Katarzyna Wereda. “We’re delivering for a client. There’s typically a main user and a main activity for a space; there’s always a function and a person engaged in that function. That’s helpful, because it narrows your starting point. Then design is about making decisions. But where inclusivity comes in, is in affording the end user some power to make decisions also; adaptability and flexibility make a space resilient for potential changes, and therefore useful and accessible for more people.”

We can look to hotels, suggested Mutch, for lessons in balancing inclusivity with purpose. “You’re mainly dealing with big spaces; lots of different areas and rooms that people can use in various ways. Hotels today are an amalgam of hospitality, residential, workplace and various other sectors and, for the most part, they don’t fall into the trap of being a jack of all trades and a master of none. By necessity, they’re designed to speak to lots of people. But I also think there’s a responsibility on the end user when it comes to determining just how inclusive an environment is. As designers, we can provide a certain space and build flexibility into that space; that becomes a tool. How successfully it is used, and how well that adaptability is implemented, lies with the user. We can create spaces with the potential for inclusivity, we can’t necessarily force them to be used inclusively.”

Karthaus concurred, stressing that design has its part to play, but it isn’t the whole story: “It can allow things to happen, or it can prevent and obstruct things from happening. But it can’t make things happen. That’s all down to the user.”

Research, knowledge-sharing and better communication is key to inclusive design.

“There’s a lot of information out there already but, equally, if we take more time to research and evaluate as part of a design process, we’ll create solutions that might not work perfectly for everyone, but will be better for more people,” said Hawkins, Tarkett having recently completed a landmark research project in the field of dementia; applying the findings to new guidelines for creating reassuring, anxiety-reducing, safer spaces through design.

“Expertise is critical to achieving meaningful outcomes,” continued Maybank. “And I think collectively we need to make the case for bringing more of that expertise into the design process.”

“Including internally,” continued Mutch. “We need to bring more diversity into interior design and architecture to start with. If you’re hearing diverse perspectives from inside your own company, it allows you to implement those ideas within your designs; to consider inclusivity in different ways.”

In creating inclusive spaces, that expertise could be a colour specialist like Fox, an autism authority like Maybank, a research document like that created by Tarkett or, as the table agreed, it could be simply engaging more with each other cross-industry, to benefit from the lessons learnt, challenges overcome or pitfalls avoided.

“The lack of engagement has always been a point of frustration,” opined Fox. “We all have different perspectives, but sometimes there’s a lack of reaching out, across studios and across disciplines. If there were more ways of working together or coming together in conversations like this, then it would accelerate progress in the area of inclusivity, and make things better, more quickly.”

“There definitely aren’t enough conversations, where we’re actually exploring where we’re struggling or where something can be improved,” noted Wereda. “Another point is feedback from users. We don’t always know what the issues are. That is really key. In an effort to design inclusively, we try to understand the communities around us – we try to understand and predict behaviours – but we also need to know if those predictions were correct or not.”

It’s here that post-occupancy evaluation could play a part, for Karthaus: “By and large it doesn’t really happen. And it’s crazy, because it means that every decision that’s made is missing out on the lessons from all of the other decisions before it. How do we know how inclusive a space is, if we can’t gauge how well it worked in practice?”

Designing inclusively should be seen as an opportunity, not a chore.

“There’s so much more awareness now, around issues of making spaces work for people and making more people feel included and that they belong,” said Maybank. “Design has the power to open up wonderful experiences for people, or just to make ordinary experiences more accessible. And giving that to people doesn’t have to add complication or cost. It could simply be considering elements like wayfinding, colour or spatial planning.”

“Plus it should be fun,” stressed Mutch. “It’s a creative challenge and it allows us to be playful and challenge convention.” That shattering of traditional ideas or approaches is, for many at the table, part of why inclusive design has the potential to be a vehicle for radical originality; as well as the pathway to a more empathetic design future.

“In the dictionary, inclusivity is both a verb and a noun. Quite often we focus too much on the noun and not enough on the verb, i.e. the process of design,” suggests Karthaus. “Inclusivity can never be captured by a set of considerations; everyone experiences the world differently. So perhaps inclusivity is about bringing challenge into the design process and interrogating established views and assumptions. It’s a recognition that our past ways of working and our past ways of designing are not fit for purpose for the future.”

It’s an optimistic vision and, just like inclusivity, one predicated on bringing people together. As Hawkins concluded: “I think the more that we have these discussions, the more that we learn and the more that we’re able to share, the more that we can actually design and create change.”