Almost everyone has become acutely aware of our seasonal changes; the exaggerated swings from hot to cold and back again — what is popularly called “the environmental crisis.”
We all spontaneously adjust to strange, new patterns as they occur; but there are some paths and adjustments that don’t have to involve just anxiously waiting for the next weather surprise to drive your schedules! You know what I mean: scrape ice off the windshield this morning, and tomorrow morning dress for a spring-like day!
But, before I get to some interesting ideas, it must be said that prevention and solutions that will help reverse or arrest negative climate change are, of course, the priority. Everything from conscientious recycling to electric-powered vehicles come onto the menu of positive steps we can consider.
That said, innovative Interior Design is encouraging clients to look at some workable solutions that can accommodate erratic weather patterns. Where your commercial or residential Interiors are concerned, “natural” solutions abound!
Preparing for climate surprises can be very exciting! Once, elements like “sun rooms,” atriums and other outside-in units were just attractive novelties. Fun to have, and lovely, but usually devolving into a hot-house for indoor plants – not a place for reading and relaxing or a place for the kids to play. Revising such areas into actual full room additions is something to consider.
With weather patterns becoming less and less predictable, it just makes sense to develop home or business environments that cooperate with the unpredictability! Bringing segments of your outside environment inside – where you can control the weather – is both possible, workable, beautiful and functional!
It requires a pause to reconsider our assumptions about traditional structures, such as atriums, in commercial business environments. Picture: instead of just a spot of light and flowing Rhododendrons, imagine a bona fide conference room under a glass bubble with that whimsical weather present, but now perhaps an unexpected asset to creative thinking!
In considering such innovations at your residential site, the benefits include the very real possibility, for instance, of “outside time” for children when the actual outside is simply formidable! Expanding the atrium concept to a vision of additional rooms in the home, begs consideration.
It’s a fact that our weather patterns can either unavoidably and unpredictably isolate us, or inspire us to newer considerations of how to cope. The hot is getting hotter; the cold and stormy is becoming fiercer, and drives us inside for longer time spans. Managing these wide sweeps and contrasts can affect our outlook on any task at hand. Consider the Mom with young children who can’t get enough outside playtime! That’s one good argument for bringing some of the outside inside.
Thinking about some of these solutions is part of what is confronting all of us as we come to grips with the realities of this gradual climate change. Providing an outdoor “playhouse” where children are not really outside, but just out of the main house, is another approach!
This Interior designer believes that it’s better to look at challenges like our weather patterns with a realistic eye – rather than just moaning and groaning and muddling on. Our business and residential environments are where we spend most of the hours of our lives! Why not counter-punch the impacts of these severe patterns?
There are many faces to the effects of severe changes in our weather patterns. Extreme heat in areas unaccustomed to it causes damage — to our roofing, our outside surfaces treatments, the effectiveness of windows and interior temperature control – to name just a few trouble spots.
Unusual stress is placed on interiors, overall, when more and more time is spent inside, because the outside is intolerable.
Take a good look at the critical considerations as they relate to the very real impacts of climate change on your various Interior environments!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer (CID) in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on FaceBook at Business Design Services.
