Design Interior

Interiors get drawn part by part: partitions from a legend, a ceiling grid, millwork when the joiner asks, finishes from a schedule filled in at the end. Each part can be competent and the interior still reads as arbitrary, because nobody said what it was supposed to do.

This is the step before those. It is deliberately broad, and it does one thing: it settles the demands so the specific skills have something to work against.

Workflow

Step 1. Take the operation, not the taste

Ask, in one message:

1. Who is in each kind of space, how many, how often, and doing what?
2. What happens to these surfaces: trolleys, chairs, water, grease, chemicals, children, shoes, bicycles, animals?
3. Who cleans it, how often, with what, and can they reach everything?
4. How long is this expected to last before it is redone? A five-year fit-out and a thirty-year institution are different buildings with the same plan.
5. What is the budget, and has anyone said where it should concentrate?
6. What is fixed already: the base building, an existing element, something the client owns or has chosen?
7. Is there a brand, a house standard, or a previous project this has to sit beside?

Question 3 is the one nobody asks and it decides more of the specification than any other. A finish that cannot be cleaned by the person who actually cleans it fails within a year, and no drawing shows that.

Step 2. Group the spaces by demand, not by name

Not room by room. By what the space has to withstand:

Group	Rooms in it	Wear	Acoustic	Cleanability	Privacy	Life

Most projects have three or four groups and thirty rooms. Working by group is what makes the interior coherent, and working room by room is what makes it arbitrary.

For each demand, record where the requirement came from: the operation, the brief, the code, or an assumption. Assumptions get counted.

Step 3. Decide where the money goes, out loud

The decision that is otherwise made by attrition, at the end, by whatever survives the last cut:

Where	Why it earns it	What pays for it

State it as a trade, always. Money spent on the entrance is money not spent on the back corridor, and saying so is what makes it a decision rather than a drift. Point at budget-reconciliation when the number is already short.

Two things worth deciding here rather than later:

• What repeats and what is singular. A repeating standard, done well and once, buys the attention for the two or three spaces that carry the project. An interior where everything is special is an interior where nothing is.
• What is buried and what is replaceable. Money in something that has to be demolished to change is a longer commitment than money in something that gets swapped.

Step 4. Establish what the base building already decided

If this is a fit-out or a renovation, much of the interior is not a choice. Point at fit-out-study and existing-conditions-survey, and record here what they found that constrains the interior specifically:

• Floor-to-floor and what the ceiling can be. Point at design-ceiling.
• Where structure lands, and what cannot be moved or covered.
• What the servicing forces: diffuser positions, sprinkler heads, riser locations, panel locations.
• What the landlord requires or provides.
• The level of the existing floor, which is never flat.

Step 5. Work the four constants across every group

Every interior decision is one of these, and each has a skill:

Constant	Question	Skill
Enclosure	What separates the spaces, and how far up	design-partition
Overhead	What the ceiling is and what is above it	design-ceiling
Fitted	What is built in rather than bought	design-millwork
Surface	What the floors, walls and ceilings are	schedule-builder

For each group from Step 2, state the demand each constant has to meet. Do not answer it here. The answer is the specific skill's, and the point of this step is that it arrives with a brief instead of a blank.

Then the two that cut across all four: acoustic separation (design-acoustic-separation) and light (senior-lighting-consultant, daylight-study).

Step 6. Report and hand off

• The space groups with their demands, and how many demands are assumptions.
• Where the money concentrates, and what pays for it.
• What repeats and what is singular.
• What the base building already decided.
• A hand-off list: for each of the four constants, which skill takes it and what it has been told.
• What has not been decided and who decides it.

Close by saying nothing was detailed and nothing was specified here.

Step 7. Save, if asked

Ask whether to write the strategy to a file and where. It is read back every time one of the specific skills runs.

Rules

• Detail nothing. Every specific decision names the skill that owns it.
• Never supply a finish, a rating, a cost, or a product.
• Group by demand, never room by room.
• Ask who cleans it, every run.
• State where the money concentrates as a trade, with what pays for it.
• Record where every requirement came from, and count the assumptions.
• Say what the base building already decided before proposing anything.

Anti-patterns

• Starting with a palette.
• Working room by room, which produces thirty decisions and no interior.
• Deciding the finish before knowing who cleans it and how.
• Letting the budget concentrate by attrition rather than by decision.
• Making everything special.
• Detailing a partition or a ceiling here.
• Treating a fit-out's base building as a blank slate.
• Producing a strategy with no hand-offs, which leaves the specific work exactly where it was.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.