The Design Institute of Australia (DIA) has put out a nation-wide call to interior designers, both members and non-members, to join a Zoom meeting scheduled for 8am, Tuesday 12 September. Register here.

The DIA has stated almost 250 people have registered for the meeting with numbers climbing.

The topic of the meeting will address the role of interior designers, which is under challenge by the NSW Building Bill 2023. The DIA has raised that regulators don’t understand what interior designers do and has noted that the profession urgently needs to be considered for licensing under the NSW Building Bill 2023 to allow interior designers to practice in their full capacity.

It’s calling for interior designers to offer their input to strengthen the case via this survey, and join the meeting on Tuesday 12 September to better understand the current situation.

In a series of direct electronic reach-outs from DIA supporters and members, the DIA has further outlined the situation as follows:

“In a significant step towards advancing the recognition and regulation of the interior design profession in Australia, a crucial meeting took place in Sydney last Thursday. Representatives from the DIA met with officials from the New South Wales Department of Customer Service, to discuss what would be required to achieve licensing for interior designers in NSW.”

The DIA states that this is important because “NSW is the state leading the review of its building regime. If licensing for interior designers doesn’t happen in NSW, we predict that the profession will disappear under the category of building designers who are already licensed.

“We believe interior designers should be recognised as a separate class of design practitioners,” it states.

The DIA has two weeks to further make its case, built upon “evidence of where interior designers have avoided potential risk to the consumer”.

The DIA’s latest submission to NSW Government can be viewed here.

The DIA urges interior designers nation-wide to attend the Tuesday 12 September 8am meeting and also complete this survey to enable the DIA to compile essential evidence required to present its case.

Design Institute of Australia
design.org.au

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