Global Consciousness Applied in Architecture and Interior Design

This article addresses the knowledge-sharing that industry organisations within architecture, interior design, construction, landscape and spatial development can facilitate. Not as yet another soft layer of values. As professional capacity.

In Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization, the development of communication systems and energy regimes is linked with the development of human empathy and global consciousness. The book’s subtitle is not cautious:

“The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.”

Jeremy Rifkin argues that new energy and communication regimes have historically created more complex societies while expanding human empathic sensitivity. He asks whether humanity can develop global empathy quickly enough to meet ecological and civilisational crises. Read about The Empathic Civilization: Google Books and Wiley.

Technological development, including within architecture and interior design, requires more than technical competence. It requires a consciousness capable of understanding the consequences of its own tools. It requires a global leap in empathy. It requires changed habits at individual, organisational and societal levels.

These new habits create new opportunities for architects and interior designers. Personally. Professionally. Commercially. Socially.

The interior is not a background. The interior is civilisational infrastructure.

Between Necessity and Curiosity

We experience the global crisis differently.

For some, housing has become too expensive. For others, it is too large, too small, run-down or wrongly situated in relation to the life that is to be lived. Some buildings require a disproportionate amount of repair and maintenance. Others are affected by damp, noise, inadequate indoor environments, problematic materials or conditions requiring professional investigation.

Our civilisation continues to address its problems technologically and economically within the framework of consciousness that has already helped to produce them. The market responds by commercialising energy-storing bricks, FSC- and PEFC-certified timber, reduced VOC emissions, energy-efficient installations, circular material flows and environmentally certified cleaning products.

All this is necessary. But it is not the whole solution.

An environment can be technically improved without being humanly transformed. A material can be certified while the overall interior is still experienced as alienating, overstimulating, passive or disconnected from the human being.

We can optimise the building while overlooking the resident.

The Market Has Already Discovered the Inner Space

Interior professionals are experiencing demand for spiritual well-being, mindful living, the curation of meaningful lifestyles, atmospheric balance and personal design identities.

The market has discovered that people do not buy function alone.

They buy identity. Meaning. Belonging. Narrative. The possibility of sensing themselves.

The need became evident during periods of lockdown, when more people began to regard the home as more than a practical framework. Read about the demand for personal and well-designed homes.

Articles about spiritual home design describe a movement away from purely style-based categories towards homes associated with well-being, balance, personal meaning and a deeper relationship between person and home. Read about spiritual home design.

Design iDNA works explicitly with the connection between personality, human energy and the home environment. The model describes design personalities including security, joy, growth, spirituality, softness and flow. Explore Design iDNA.

Wabi-sabi-based design is similarly associated with authenticity, nature, the ageing of materials and the beauty of imperfection. Explore ALLPRACE.

ACIIID has addressed spiritual well-being as a field within interior design, while trend communication is moving towards emotional comfort, personal narrative, material honesty and nature as a design philosophy rather than decoration. Read about contemporary interior trends.

The inner space has already become a market.

The question is whether the profession will develop it with precision or leave it to the lifestyle industry.

Daydreaming Is Not Wasted Time

Meaningful well-being also includes periods when the human being is not producing.

Daydreaming. Restoration. Silence.

Technological and commercial civilisation continually evaluates human beings through function, speed and output. But a living person does not function like a machine.

Inner capacity also develops through pauses, reflection, sensing, contemplation, unstructured attention and the slow integration of experience. An interior optimised solely for activity is not necessarily efficient. It can become a machine for gradual depletion.

The interior must therefore accommodate productivity, movement and community, but also protection, energy zones, comfort zones, restoration and daydreaming.

Not as a luxury. As human infrastructure.

In market terms, interior culture is moving towards inner development goals that make people better able to accommodate increasingly complex environments and challenges.

In Denmark, nine væredygtighedsmål, or inner sustainability goals, have been developed as a supplement to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Centre for Inner Sustainability describes væredygtighed as the inner dimension of sustainability. It is the inner transition that must accompany the outer one. The nine goals were developed as an organic entry point into the work, not as a finished checklist. Read about the nine inner sustainability goals.

This is a crucial correction.

It is possible to work with sustainability without changing the human and organisational patterns that produce overconsumption, alienation and short-term thinking.

We can replace the material without changing the desire.

We can reduce energy consumption without examining what kind of life that energy is intended to support.

We can certify the building without questioning the consciousness that commissioned it.

Inner sustainability shifts the question.

From what the building consumes.

To how the human being is present.

Global Consciousness Is Not a Decorative Theme

Internationally, organisations such as the Galileo Commission and the Institute of Noetic Sciences inspire a broader discussion of consciousness, science and human capacity.

The Galileo Commission was founded with the stated purpose of challenging unspoken materialist assumptions and expanding science’s worldview. Its work represents a debated field without broad scientific consensus, but explicitly questions the nature of consciousness and the epistemological framework of science.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a non-profit research centre and laboratory working at the intersection of scientific investigation and profound human experience. The institute was founded in 1973 by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

These organisations demonstrate that questions concerning consciousness, inner experience and the relationship between the human being and reality are already being explored within organised research and development environments.

The interior profession should not wait for other disciplines to complete the formulation of a field in which we are already working.

Industry Development Is Also Business Development

Our technological and commercial civilisation continually seeks advantages through new types of enterprise and business models.

As professional capacity expands, new income opportunities also emerge within architecture and interior design. New services may be based on inner sustainability goals within the built environment or offered by private companies providing interior coaching, atmospheric analysis, sensory mapping, Field Maps, restorative environments, regenerative concept development and post-occupancy evaluation of user experience.

Working with inner sustainability goals introduces a new operational form for new types of business.

When human inner capacity becomes part of the professional field of investigation, the analysis, client dialogue, design brief, value creation, delivery, evaluation and business model all change.

Inner sustainability is therefore not merely an ethical project.

It is also a field of innovation and business.

Industry organisations within architecture, interior design, construction, landscape, furniture and spatial development have a crucial function.

They can limit themselves to defending existing professional boundaries. Or they can create laboratories for a discipline that has not yet found its final form.

Networks are needed in which architects, interior designers, researchers, manufacturers, educators and systemic practitioners share knowledge about how empathy, inclusion and open consciousness can be applied within concrete design processes.

How is empathy translated into spatial choices? What does inclusion look like beyond minimum requirements? How is the designer’s attention trained? How is atmospheric experience documented? How do we distinguish between method, hypothesis, experience and effect? How do we develop new services without reducing consciousness to another marketable trend?

Industry organisations must do more than follow developments. They must create the professional spaces in which development can take place.

Not another network in which we confirm what we already know.

A professional laboratory in which new concepts, methods and prototypes can be critically tested.

We must not merely discuss the industry of the future. We must develop it.

DGNB Heart and the Measurable Human Being

In Denmark, DGNB has introduced an additional distinction focusing on health and well-being.

DGNB Heart can be awarded to buildings that are also DGNB-certified and recognises developments that make an additional effort to support users’ well-being. Read about DGNB Heart.

It is an important signal. Human well-being can no longer be reduced to an afterthought.

But we must also remain critical.

A certification can measure its defined criteria. It cannot necessarily register all the immaterial qualities that people experience within a space.

We must therefore respect the precision of certifications without elevating existing measuring instruments into Paradise-o-Metres.

Paradise-o-Metre is Blissbode’s ironic term for the way we perceive and use physical measuring instruments as though they could determine whether an environment is whole, life-giving or humanly good.

They do not measure paradise.

They measure the physical parameters they were developed to register.

That is necessary. But it is not the whole of reality.

The UN, UNFPA and Spiritual Transformation

In October 2015, the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, convened a dialogue concerning the profound human and organisational transformation required to support the Sustainable Development Goals.

The reflection paper published in August 2016 presented the principal conclusion:

“The main conclusion was that sustainable development requires a ‘spiritual transformation’ of ourselves and the organizations we are linked with that actively extends to the societal, global, and ecological levels.”

The paper connects this transformation with compassion, humility, collaboration, transparency, empathy, respect, freedom, love, peace and hope. Read the reflection paper Enhancing Human Flourishing Within the 2030 Development Agenda.

The paper emerged from a dialogue convened by UNFPA. It is not a binding UN directive for the architecture and interior design industries.

But that does not make the conclusion any less explosive.

Sustainable development requires more than technological transition.

It requires the transformation of people and organisations. If this is the case, the interior profession cannot continue designing as though the inner life of the human being lies outside our professional responsibility.

Transforming Psychological Waste

New opportunities for industry and business rest upon a societal and individual promise to transform psychological waste.

Steen Hildebrandt draws upon Jes Bertelsen’s work in the discussion of growth and sustainability:

“The more people there are on Earth, the more the amount of psychological waste grows. Not only does the amount of pollution within each individual grow, in the form of physical blockages, but the amount of projected psychological waste grows as well. If population growth increases exponentially, one might say that the amount of psychological waste, negative emotions, infantile material, repression and trauma, also grows exponentially.”

In An Essay on Inner Freedom, Jes Bertelsen connects the fragile condition of the planet with the need for empathy, contemplation, heartfelt presence and consciousness training.

Psychological waste is not physical pollution that can be measured in the same way as VOCs or particulates. But people’s unconscious patterns have consequences. They materialise in decisions, power structures, conflicts, organisations, resource consumption, relationships, buildings and interiors.

The interior cannot treat trauma. But it can maintain or challenge some of the environmental conditions in which old patterns are repeated.

When we know ourselves better, we open our consciousness to understanding others more deeply. We add resources. Not only personal resources, but professional capacity.

Such resources can be used to create meaning in professional work, knowledge-sharing and methodological development. They can strengthen movements already underway and enable the industry to integrate inner values into the technological and economic creation of society.

Inner Matters for Interior Professionals

The current opportunities for growth within architecture and interior design are not found solely in new materials and technologies.

They are also found in our worldview, our perspective on nature, our view of humanity and our self-image.

The external adaptation to a sustainable lifestyle must proceed alongside inner adjustments such as empathy, inclusion, presence, openness and self-awareness.

These are not private qualities that designers can choose to address after working hours.

They influence what the designer sees. Whom the designer listens to. Which assumptions are built into the solution. Which people are included. And which forms of life the project makes possible.

Working with expanded capacities also requires the development of new technical terms and new methods of validation.

We cannot simply call something conscious, vital or regenerative.

We must be able to explain what we mean, how we work and how we investigate the results.

The Human Being as the Measure

The Greek sophist Protagoras stated:

“Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.”

This does not mean that people may freely declare every subjective experience to be objective truth.

It means that every environment is experienced through a living, sensing and interpreting human being.

Architecture exists physically without the resident. But architectural meaning emerges in the encounter.

Professionals must therefore develop a deeper understanding of the home’s location, the character of its materials, its building systems, the history of the place, the user’s sensory experience, social patterns, atmospheric conditions and the immaterial qualities experienced over time.

On this basis, professionals can create conditions for protection, possibilities, energy zones, comfort zones, transformational zones and spaces for community, restoration, courage and movement on a subtle level.

Building Systems and Materials Carry Consciousness

Building systems and materials carry consciousness that must be explored and used for the benefit of residents.

This is a central Blissbode thesis. It must not be reduced to the claim that building materials necessarily possess human consciousness.

Within Blissbode’s universe, the statement that materials and systems carry consciousness means that they establish conditions for human intentions, technological paradigms, economic priorities, cultural values, craft decisions, ecological relationships, traces of previous users and contemporary ideas about the human being.

A ventilation system is not merely technology. It is a system with which human resonance interacts and to which it responds.

A material is not simply a surface. It carries traces of geology and processing.

A house plan is not neutral. It organises access, control, privacy, possibilities and resources.

The house materialises a form of consciousness before the resident even enters.

This is the layer explored by field architecture.

From Behavioural Influence to Consciousness Design

Interior professionals already organise environments to influence people’s movement, purchasing, duration of stay, concentration, collaboration, restoration and social encounters.

This is rarely called consciousness design.

But the influence is already present.

Blissbode makes the atmosphere interactive.

Professionals with an awareness of immaterial qualities can arrange a personal interior with the intention of guiding the resident’s thoughts and feelings towards more constructive decisions and actions.

This is not a guarantee of success, well-being or particular results. Human autonomy remains intact.

But the environment can make certain possibilities more accessible than others. It can make values visible, reduce unnecessary friction, support desired habits, create places for reflection and make new futures physically conceivable.

This is not mind control.

It is the responsible organisation of the environment’s invitations.

Enerqist™: The Human Being and the Space as One Entity

The term Enerqist™ does not describe a practitioner or professional title.

The Enerqist is the human being together with the space in which the human being spends time over an extended period.

Just as an equipage consists of both horse and rider, the Enerqist consists of the human being, the space, the relationship between them, the time during which they exist together and the mutual influence arising through sensing, use, action and atmosphere.

The human being is not one entity and the space another.

The human being leaves traces within the space through habits, movements, objects, narratives and emotional investments. At the same time, the space makes its structures, materials, atmospheres, possibilities and limitations available to human life.

The Enerqist changes when a person’s life changes, when the space is rebuilt, when new meanings are added, when old patterns are broken or when the relationship between person and space becomes more conscious.

The purpose is not merely to analyse the human being or optimise the space as an isolated object.

The purpose is to work with the relational whole that the person and the space already constitute.

Architecture and interior design are the work of shaping the living relationship between the human being and the space in which the human being becomes.

Measurement, Governance and Professional Power

Validity does not arise from repeating a desired result. It requires a critical examination of assumptions, foundations, methods, registrations, calculations, assessments and alternative explanations.

Steen Hildebrandt uses the phrase:

“Only what can be measured can be managed.”

But the statement contains a danger.

If we only attempt to manage what our present instruments can measure, the instrument becomes the authority that defines reality.

What remains unmeasured is made unimportant.

What cannot be measured is made invisible.

The appropriate professional response is not to abolish measurement.

We must develop our capacity to investigate what today’s instruments do not yet capture.

The Architecture and Interior Design Industries Must Be Moved

The architecture and interior design industries have been too modest in their understanding of their own significance.

We have reduced ourselves to providers of solutions, surfaces, functions and documentation.

But we organise people’s possibilities for being in the world.

That is an enormous responsibility.

It is also an enormous field of business.

The next generation of interior services will not only concern which furniture should be purchased, which colours match, where the wall should stand or how the project can be certified.

It will concern which consciousness the environment materialises. Which capacity it invites forward. Which patterns it maintains. Which relationships it supports. Which view of humanity it embodies. And which future it makes possible.

Industry organisations have a strategic responsibility here.

They can continue protecting existing forms of practice. Or they can bring to the industries the professional rawness, curiosity and commitment to research required by the next stage of development.

We must not merely follow market demand.

We must develop the professional discipline that the market does not yet know it needs.

Enjoyable, Inspiring and Useful: Take Part

Networks and knowledge-sharing must create new tools for an interior practice enriched by greater capacity.

Empathy, inclusion and open consciousness are not decorative values.

They are entry points into a new field of professional development.

Industry organisations and professional networks can create frameworks for workshops, study visits, concrete cases, meditative design investigations, pilot projects, methodological development, research collaborations and the documentation of experience.

We need professionals willing to step beyond the professional comfort zone.

Not to reject technology.

Not to reject measurement.

Not to replace research with belief.

But to insist that the inner life of the human being also belongs to the world we design.

Global consciousness does not begin somewhere else.

It begins in the way we perceive the human being, the material and the space.

The architecture and interior design industries must not wait for the future.

We must help shape it.

Take Part in the Development

Blissbode invites industry organisations, architects, interior designers, researchers, educators, developers, manufacturers and systemic practitioners to contribute to the development of field architecture and inner sustainability.

The work may include atmospheric mapping, inner sustainability goals within interiors, Enerqist™, Field Maps, Bio-Charged Points™, consciousness-based design processes, empathic design tools, pilot projects, documentation and interdisciplinary research, including the Resonant Living Project™.

Contact: Contact@Blissbode.Live