Raising the Game

Guus Beumer, initiator, talks about the second edition of The Great Indoors Award, based on the theme of ‘Changing Ideals’.

Words: Femke de Wild, for FRAME #69


The Great Indoors Award was launched in 2007. How do you look back on it?

Very positively. We had only a short time to get the award off the ground, but the teamwork – still new at that time – among the NAiM/Bureau Europa; Marres, centre for contemporary culture; and Frame magazine functioned surprisingly well. The workaday reality of Frame differs from that of a cultural institution. This gathering together of different worlds is not only extremely interesting but also a reflection of the reality behind an interior. An interior also combines a certain social reality with the role of a client and the vision of a designer. With this project, we managed not only to spotlight the best interior-design practices from across the globe, but also to emphasize their diverse backgrounds and to create new connections between the international and the local, as well as between the established and the experimental. Nominees from all over the world gave workshops to local students from which a dialogue emerged. Later, students from Maastricht and Aachen worked as trainees at Neri & Hu, for example. The star and the student met each other thanks to this award; besides celebrating the individual talent of a designer and the quality of a project, an award ought to stimulate such types of relationships.


What’s different this time around?

In 2007, our aim was to make certain developments in interior design visible, such as the diversity that occurs through working with very different budgets. We believe this diversity is crucial, and we wanted to show how it works. We may not have achieved that goal completely; we’ll go about it in a different way this time. Two years ago we had a preliminary selection, which meant the jury saw only the designs that had made it to the A list. We’ve decided to drop the nomination round and to present all of the hundreds of entries directly to the international jury. We will also be awarding a prize for a design chosen by the public. Already a highly significant sphere of activity, the interior continues to gain in importance. By establishing a prize based on popular opinion, we hope to stimulate the discussion on interiors even more, but this time within a more general audience. You could say that the evaluation of an international jury composed of design professionals will be balanced through the vox populi: the voice of the contemporary consumer, who is also remarkably well informed. We will also ask members of the public to explain why they voted for a particular project and to discuss their reasons not only with us but also, through the website, with the design community at large.


This year a specific theme will be introduced: Changing Ideals.

Last time we proposed a theme – ‘the interior as new utopia’ – in a rather implicit manner. This year we will be more emphatic in announcing the theme. Much has happened since the previous awards were presented. The economic crisis is leaving its mark, but gradually a discussion is developing as well, a moment of reconsideration and reorientation. In recent years, the interior has often represented success to one degree or another. Success took shape through the design of an interior. Now we’re questioning everything, including how we represent success or luxury. Exorbitantly expensive restaurants, for example, are experiencing great difficulty at the moment; luxury on a grand scale is no longer acceptable. Designers are constantly rethinking the kind of quality they want to deliver and how they want to express themselves, and the current crisis will act as both a drawback and a stimulus. In response to the Salone del Mobile in Milan, an article in The New York Times mentioned the endless stream of ecology on display. Ecology is an essential issue, but it would be a pity to show only eco-moralism to the detriment of cultural quality. What’s really interesting to us is to present a wide variety of ideas on both conceptual and technologically developed levels.


How can interior design contribute to Changing Ideals?

Interior design is quite frequently a kind of branding of the auteur, of the designer. As a client, what you’re really buying is an auteur, as it were, and that auteur demonstrates his or her power through the interior. Within the framework of Changing Ideals, I can imagine an auteur entering into another, more open relationship with the user and less with himself. That could be a changing ideal, although I’m not saying that it actually is. We’re not specifying the substance of the theme; we’re just saying that there is a changing reality, which once again is being linked to the notion of ideals more strongly than in the recent past.


Do you expect to see this development in interiors that have been designed within the past two years?

We might be a bit early, but I do think we will see it, even if it’s only because people will now evaluate their projects in a different way and thus submit different designs – with a different emphasis – than they may have done otherwise. That’s extremely interesting in itself. The jury will also view the projects from the perspective provided by current events. We’ve decided to be quite explicit about this matter, rather than to act as though the designs will still be assessed as they were in 2007.


Last time the objective was to approach interior design as a mature discipline. And now?

Interior design is an exceptionally dominant discipline; all that’s lacking is reflection on the subject. A powerful dynamic exists in terms of production, and the system has been moving closer and closer to the system that governs fashion. What simply does not fit into this system is any form of delay, and reflection is a form of delay. NAiM/Bureau Europa, Marres and Frame share the ambition of strengthening reflection on interior design.


Will the 2009 edition include lectures and workshops?

Yes, but the whole concept of time will be different. In 2007, everything took place during one weekend. The workshops will begin earlier this time. We’re developing more long-term activities. Workshops will focus on the Changing Ideals theme, and lectures will revolve around what goes on in the workshops. The event will be less of a conference.
In addition, we want to make the results of the workshops more visible, which hardly happened last time. That’s the problem with awards. All your work leads to a moment of culmination, and that moment is over before you know it. This year we’re aiming more at continuity, at cooperation and at reflection afterwards. The website is an ideal place for that sort of discussion.


Projects can be submitted in a number of categories. Last time, when the jury made its final decisions those categories were more or less ignored. And this year?

That came as a complete surprise to us as well, but it does illustrate how much freedom the jury has in its evaluation. We see the classification mainly as an instrument for the participants. Concrete categories give designers clear grounds for submitting a project; they recognize themselves in one group or another: I am that new café, I am that new bar. For that reason, we’ve maintained the categories. But we’re also attempting to keep communication between participant and jury extremely straightforward. Now that all projects are to be presented directly to the international jury, there’s more room for this.


You mention diversity – why is diversity so important?

‘Who am I?’ is a question that’s become absolutely vital to organizations, brands and individuals – and it’s a question we want to see represented in projects submitted for these awards. Then, too, sociopolitical issues are influencing interior design to an ever-increasing degree. The demand for security and comfort, for example, is more and more often projected on a city. Consequently, public space is more and more often approached as interior space; 50 years ago we viewed the city in a very different way. At one time, every sphere of activity had its own type of professional. Today, the fashion designer is involved in urban planning, the graphic designer in architecture, and so forth and so on. We’re eager to chart this explosively dynamic field of action with The Great Indoors Award.