Ethics in interior architecture — IFI Winter Seminar 2026
Explore the ethical responsibilities and societal impact of interior architecture and design at the IFI Winter Seminar 2026, hosted at Aalto University on 7 February. Join leading voices in design, architecture, and interiors as they examine how design practices shape and are shaped by social, economic, and cultural contexts.
This full-day event, held in collaboration with SIO (Finnish Association of Interior Architects), brings together leading thinkers and practitioners to explore how design, architecture, and interiors carry ethical responsibility in shaping the built environment.
THE ETHICS OF OUR PROFESSION
DATE: 07.02.2026
VENUE: Aalto-University, Seminar space D, Otakaari 1, ESPOO, FINLAND
PROGRAM
10:00 OPENING WORDS BY THE IFI DELEGATE: The role and responsibility of interior architecture and design in the changing world
10:30 TALK: DESIGN
Andrea Botero, Associate Professor (New Frontiers in Design), Department of Design, Aalto-University
Never neutral
Design work is never neutral; it occurs in specific historical contexts shaped by socio-economic and political forces that make possible certain “designs” and not others. These designs in turn shape and affect the historical-social and-economical contexts in which they come to be. Design practices are thus both quite irrelevant and at the same time vital pieces of the puzzle to achieve more liveable conditions for our world.
12:00 TALK: ARCHITECTURE
Iris Andersson, Architect, teacher and PhD researcher
Architecture as a Mediator of Values – The Experience of Safety at the Intersection of Physical and Social Space
Transportation nodes can simultaneously enable inclusion and exclusion, safety and fear. Drawing on fieldwork at Helsinki Central Railway Station, my ongoing PhD research in architecture explores how safety and insecurity are experienced, perceived, and negotiated. What factors and perspectives define safety in public spaces?
12:15 SIO INTERIOR OF THE YEAR 2026: Award announcement and presentation by the winner
12:30 BREAK: Refreshments and exhibition of Secto Design lightning
13:45 TALK: INTERIORS
Professor Graeme Brooker, Head of Programme Interior Design, Royal College of Art
Materialising Ethics: Interior Dispositions
Ethics represent the principles, values and character of a subject and its agents. Interiors entwines material with morals, processes with practices.
This talk will explore these ideas in relation to what it describes as Interior Dispositions.
14:20 PANEL: Dogmas and ideals as tools in the world of design
With Greame Brooker, Tarmo Piirmets, Matias Saresvuo and Raisa Mäkinen
Tarmo Piirmets is an acclaimed interior architect from Estonia and the president of the Estonian Interior Architects Association ESL. With his company PINK he has been awarded especially by school design and
Matias Saresvuo from the Huttunen – Lipasti Architecture office has been recently working on a project that is challenging the norms of the ”officially approved” architectural visual styles and practices by adapting historical Jugend / Art Nouveau palette to a new housing block in the Koirasaari area of Helsinki.
Raisa Mäkinen is an architect and visual artist based in Helsinki. Her master’s thesis The Spirit and Matter of Architecture, completed at Aalto University in 2025, examines the materiality and spirit of architecture through essays. She has worked as a research assistant at Aalto University in a project studying the lived experience of smart home technologies in cohousing,
15:00 DRINKS AND MINGLE
15:30 END OF EVENT
Registrations by 2nd of February
Ilmoittaudu 2.2. mennessä
office@sio.fi
About IFI: The International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI) is a global organization advancing the profession of interior architecture and design. IFI promotes excellence, education, and ethics in design, connecting professionals, institutions, and networks worldwide.