Buildings Remember Bad Decisions: The Cost of Ignoring Expertise

I usually write about design in its higher ideals. How space shapes behavior. How light, scale, and proportion affect how we feel in our bodies. That is the part of design I care about most. But none of that exists without the basics. Before design can elevate anything, it has to keep people safe. And safety comes from codes, from standards, and from professionals who are trained and accountable.

I do not usually write politically. I avoid it because most political conversations reward certainty instead of understanding. But this is not about ideology. It is about what happens when responsibility is stripped from the people who are trained to carry it.

Architecture and interior design are licensed professions because buildings fail in ways that cannot be undone. Licensure is not about prestige. It exists so that someone with knowledge, ethics, and legal accountability is responsible for decisions that affect human life. Structure, fire behavior, egress, materials, accessibility, environmental health. These are not abstract concepts. They determine whether people make it out of a space when something goes wrong.

There is a growing acceptance of unlicensed decision making being treated as normal. Contractors designing spaces. Developers directing structural and life safety changes. Construction models that eliminate independent professional oversight in the name of efficiency. Confidence has started to stand in for competence. Speed has started to stand in for safety.

Design has been reduced to taste. To aesthetics. To something that looks intuitive from the outside. But taste does not carry consequences. Buildings do. Codes exist because people were harmed before those rules were written. Licensure exists because someone must be responsible for applying them correctly.

What makes this moment especially important is that we now understand far more about how environments affect people than we did when many professional standards were first established. Research in neuroaesthetics has made it clear that space does not simply shelter the body. It shapes the nervous system. Light influences circadian rhythms and hormonal regulation. Ceiling height affects cognition and perceived agency. Acoustics alter stress responses. Visual complexity can support focus or overwhelm it. These are biological responses, not preferences.

As our understanding of the brain and body becomes more precise, the need for trained and accountable design professionals becomes stronger, not weaker. When design decisions influence stress, healing, attention, emotional regulation, and long-term health, those decisions cannot be treated as casual or intuitive. Neuroaesthetics does not replace codes. It reinforces why codes and licensure exist in the first place.

When responsibility disappears, the risk does not disappear with it. It gets pushed onto occupants. Onto workers. Onto communities who never agreed to take it on.

We tend to talk about failure only when it is dramatic. Collapse. Fire. Headlines. But most failures are slower than that. They show up as exits that do not function under stress. As renovations that block accessibility. As air that makes people sick over time. As spaces that dysregulate people who are already under strain.

Interior design is especially vulnerable to this erosion because it is still treated as optional. Decorative. Something anyone can do. But interiors are where people spend their lives. Where fires begin. Where air quality matters most. Where people move through illness, grief, stress, and sensory overload. Licensed interior designers are trained in life safety, egress, fire-rated assemblies, and human behavior. That training exists to prevent harm.

There is a persistent belief that regulation limits creativity. That licensure slows progress. That expertise is elitist. These ideas are convenient for anyone who benefits from lower standards. They are also dangerous. The least visible parts of design are often the most important.

Legislation plays a powerful role in shaping who is allowed to practice, who is held accountable, and whose expertise is recognized. When laws fail to reflect the complexity and responsibility of the built environment, the consequences show up in real spaces, affecting real people.

I do not enjoy writing this. I do not want to argue about it. But there is no point in talking about the power of design or the promise of neuroscience if we are unwilling to defend the systems that keep people alive inside the spaces we create.

Buildings hold people. Design shapes behavior. Licensure exists because human life is not an acceptable risk.

That should still matter.