Bevel is a place where we step away from the photographs and talk with industry leaders and thinkers about interesting ideas and issues facing the design world today. Bevel is the podcast extension of Canadian Interiors, the longest running interior design magazine in Canada, published since 1964.
Episode 27 - Examination Alternative Project: An Equity-Centered Solution w/ Sharon Portelli
In this episode of Bevel we dive into a major shift in the regulation of our profession here in Ontario, the kind that could reshape how one qualifies as a Registered Interior Designer.
In 2023, ARIDO, the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario, initiated the Examination Alternative Project, or EAP. At its core, this project responds to an evolving regulatory landscape — one that demands a licensing process that is not only rigorous and accountable but also equitable, transparent, and reflective of Canadian practice.
Traditionally, the NCIDQ exam has served as the standard path to registration. But under Ontario’s Direct Regulation Model — a framework that places ARIDO directly accountable to both the Ontario Association of Architects and the Office of the Fairness Commissioner — ARIDO must ensure that any examination it requires is valid, reliable, and fair. That includes having the authority to develop or revise qualifications where needed, particularly to remove unnecessary barriers to entry.
Enter the EAP: a Canadian-developed alternative to the NCIDQ that maintains professional rigour while intentionally rethinking how competencies are assessed. It draws from previous Canadian frameworks like the Intern Competency Review System and introduces new evaluation methods, including an oral “Entrance Interview” that replaces traditional exam-style gatekeeping.
Equity and inclusion aren’t just buzzwords here — the entire project is being audited by an external EDI consultant to minimize cultural, economic, and linguistic bias in both content and delivery. This aligns with the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act and reflects ARIDO’s obligation to create fair access to licensure for all qualified practitioners, not just those who fit the status quo.
While this Canadian option won’t replace the NCIDQ — which ARIDO still recommends for those working in U.S. jurisdictions — it will give candidates meaningful choice.
I sit down with Sharon Portelli, Executive Director at ARIDO to better understand how and why the EAP was developed, what it means for the profession, and why it represents a bold step forward for design regulation in Canada.
19 Jun 2024
Episode 26 - Rebuilding the Office Through Circularity w/ Andy Delisi
The data has been around for a long time and is not only undisputed but commonly accepted: that the built environment is responsible for approximately 42 per cent of annual global CO2 emissions.
This is bad – really bad – and we are now seeing Western governments stumble over each other with promises to address the problem. The U.K. government, for example, has just announced a commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 78 per cent by 2035, and to become Net Zero Carbon by 2050, and will do so by leaning heavily on the construction industry to rapidly adopt more sustainable practices.
The A&D industry likes to think it is serious about getting to carbon neutral. They are right up there on stages alongside governments pledging to use eco-friendly materials and solutions when designing the built environment that have a lower environmental impact. But when we start poking around at actual practices, certain “inconvenient truths” that seriously impede these sustainability goals bubble to the surface, ones that interior designers seem either unwilling or unable to do anything about. I’m talking specifically about office furniture specification and procurement.
To help me take an unvarnished look at what is going on, I sat down with Andy Delisi, vice president at Envirotech. A WELL AP since 2016, Andy has been vocal in advocating for sustainable workplaces aligned with WELL principles. He has penned four registered courses through IDCEC, focusing on topics like Smart Building Technology, Workplace Circularity and Embodied Carbon in Interiors, and has spoken on this topic at many events including the recent ARIDO AGM.
In this episode I get him to explain how “circularity” is the best weapon to combat the carbon villain, but also what’s stopping us from achieving a circular economy. We discuss what kinds of new (or just sensible) thinking designers need to explore to get off the typical “take, make, waste” model, and how can we rebuild a workplace that is still an evolving post-COVID landscape through a focus on circular design, which emphasizes sustainability at each step of a product’s lifecycle, from inception to recycling and reuse.
9 May 2024
Episode 25 - Behind the Curtain with a Production Designer w/ Shayne Fox
Every scene you see when watching a movie or television show that isn’t a documentary was purposely thought out and designed by someone. And the vast majority of times, that someone is a Production Designer. Yet while the results of their efforts are visible right there on the screen for everyone to see, a fog shrouds the magnitude of the production designer’s role to weave together imagination and technique, seamlessly blending illusion with reality.
With discipline, precision and fiscal mindfulness, their job is (put simply) to elevate the script and bring it to life, transforming ideas into captivating imagery and giving tangible purpose to those images. Using many of the same tools that those in the A&D industry would recognize, production designers plan every shot from microscopic to macroscopic detail.
Shayne Fox is a Toronto-based production designer and set decorator who for over three decades has created television programming and feature films for FX Network, NBC, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Sony, MGM and
many others. She has received two prime time Emmy nominations (https://www.emmys.com/bios/shayne-fox) as well as four Art Directors Guild nominations, two wins, and also somehow found time to design and launch a hardware line.
I was able to pull Shayne away from the set of the FX show, What We Do in The Shadows as it wrapped shooting its sixth and final season in Toronto to understand her profession more fully and just how much it mirrors the built environment design professions are familiar with.
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