At this year’s Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) meeting, the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), in partnership with 11 organizations, announced its new CGI commitment to developing “ASID Protocols for Health and Wellness in Design.”
ASID will train 40,000 interior designers and architects across the country to use these protocols to create spaces that promote occupants’ health and to specify healthier products and materials. The protocols will encompass design, products and healthcare. Planned to be concise and accessible, the protocols will incorporate Healthy Product Declarations and Cradle to Cradle-certified products.
“ASID has a history of convening multiple stakeholders on Healthy Product Declarations, LEED CI creation, evidence-based design and biophilia research,” said Randy Fiser, ASID CEO. “Our CGI commitment aligns with the society’s core business and strategic goals. It also expands our opportunities for partnership, learning and raising awareness about the value to society of building for health and well-being.”
Currently a number of factors – including the amount, complexity and multiple sources of information on creating healthy spaces – prevent interior designers, architects and the larger design community from achieving the necessary understanding to benefit fully from healthy design principles or to persuade their clients to implement them.
ASID will convene a cross-sector, multidisciplinary group of doctors, nurses, healthcare administrators, interior designers, architects, engineers, product developers and suppliers to compose a single resource manual for professionals concerned about the built environment’s effect on people.
