The design of interiors is an underrated discipline. The trouble begins with the name of a profession that apparently has no name. Some call it ‘interior design’, a sort of umbrella term that would seem to include the design of furniture, lamps, flooring and so forth. Interior designers do more than assemble a collection of objects: they use products and materials as tools to craft the particular space they have in mind. Others refer to ‘interior architecture’, two words that elicit images of well-designed rooms with nothing in them. Interior architects do more than design rooms: they open up such rooms, connect them to surrounding spaces, and make interiors suitable for human use.

Strangely enough, the profession with no name is currently the fastest-developing branch on the tree of design. Interior design (we have to call it something) combines the disciplines of fashion, architecture and product design. In addition to formal, technological and aesthetic issues, interior design also includes social aspects and even reserves a role for marketing. It’s this plethora of influences that makes interior design the consummate 21st-century multidisciplinary design practice.

The ever-increasing number of product designers and architects that are flooding the arena of interiors underlines the growing importance of this discipline. Combining tasks allows product designers to put the objects they’ve made in the context of their dreams, while today’s architects find the interior too important to leave to others – not least because they can’t ignore how interiors are inspiring the design of public space. Members of both professions are more than eager to get interior design commissions, thus putting pressure on real interior designers. And because interior designers – unlike product designers and architects – cannot yet stage a march of world-famous stars, they are threatened by this loss of territory.

Enough reason to elevate interior design to the level of ‘mature discipline’. The Great Indoors Award is intended to provide the interior designer with a platform of some stature, as well as to prompt debate and disburse information on interior design. The aim is to reward work of excellence and, at the same time, to show this work to the world. We hope to motivate and convince potential clients from both the private and the public sectors. Above all else, we want The Great Indoors to give the profession of interior design the status and position it deserves. An unambiguous name would be nice, too.

Guus Beumer, Director of Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht and Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute Maastricht

Robert Thiemann, Editor in chief of Frame magazine