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Here at Iowa State University, these are exciting times for designers. The interior design profession is facing a number of interesting challenges to contemporary society at the moment:

• Unprecedented fragmentation of experience
• Almost total lack of privacy
• Instant access to everyone else’s life
• Nearly constant communication, coupled with a nearly universal lack of comprehension
• Failure to connect “process” with “results,” leading to deep-seated frustration and anomie

All of these result in a correspondingly desperate need to personalize one’s lifestyle and make it more supportive of both function and aspiration. All design, of course, is a connotative intervention, an attempt to include the transcendent in the here-and-now. Interior design, because it operates on a personal level of interface between the individual and the environment, has the potential for leading this crucial effort.