Springtime is busy season for interior design and architecture students; an end to the semester means that final projects are due, conclusions to semester-long work are reached, and collaborations between industry companies and student come to a close.
Last week, officeinsight traveled to Kansas State University to participate in a formal review panel critiquing the workplace furniture designs of students in the College of Architecture, Planning and Design. In the course at K-State, students spend a full semester on their designs, which carry the potential for real-world collaboration with OFS Brands, should the company choose to bring the product(s) to market.
On the other side of that coin is the high-intensity one night Design This! Competition hosted by IIDA New York Chapter’s Student Mentorship Committee. The evening is a rare opportunity for students to gain on-the-spot exposure to fast-paced design work with the potential for real-world execution of their designs.
We caught up with committee Co-chairs Anne Wood and Lauren Buchanan to learn more about this year’s competition, held February 25th at the Inscape Showroom. Each year, the competition partners with a company to create a design brief for students to work through and present to a panel of judges. The event is first-come, first-serve, open to any interior design student in the New York area, and presents a huge opportunity for students who want real-world experience.
Ms. Wood, an A&D sales representative at Herman Miller, and Ms. Buchanan, a sales representative at TRI-KES, helped launch Design This! five years ago as an extension of IIDA NY’s Speed Mentoring events, which began as a way to help address the stress graduating students were feeling about lamentable job perspectives.
“We wanted to team up with manufacturers on a smaller scale, so that the possibility of bringing the designs to market is there,” said Ms. Wood. “And we wanted to provide mentorship and networking opportunities in an accelerated format.”
Previous years featured design briefs off all sorts, including water faucet design for Waterworks, wallcovering designs for Flavor Paper, and showroom design for Humanscale.
“In school, students learn many things, but they often don’t spend time learning how to design product,” said Ms. Wood. “This event challenges students to think on their feet, be mindful of their time, and work well on a time-crunch with people they don’t know.”
This year’s competition was inspired by IIDA member Hana Getachew, founder and creative director of bolé road textiles and member of the Student Mentorship Committee. A native of Ethiopia, Ms. Getachew designs and curates authentic fabrics. Partnering with artisans in the African nation, Ms. Getachew’s fresh interpretations of traditional motifs and colors are handwoven into pillows, throws, napkins, table runners and other accessories for the home.
For Design This!, Ms. Getachew challenged participants to create patterns inspired by her two new collections, bolé road to Brooklyn, influenced by urban culture, and Modern Take, a line that reinterprets traditional Ethiopian textile patterns for a modern setting. Challenge winner Callie Ammidon, a senior student at the New York School of Interior Design, will see her designs incorporated into Ms. Getachew’s new collections, debuting at BKLYN Designs this May, and sold online with the e-commerce launch of bolé road textiles this spring. Runner-up winners were NYSID student Kevin Lee Yi and Pratt student Aishwarya Govind.
After a brief networking reception, the students are introduced to the design challenge, and then quickly set about sketching. Students receive just 60-90 minutes to work (depending on the nature of the design brief from year to year) separated by two 10-minute mentoring sessions with industry professionals who attend the event as mentors. Each student, or group of students, then introduces their designs to a panel of three judges in a formal four-minute presentation. This year’s judges included Ms. Getachew; Sheila Kim, editor at Architectural Record; and Jeanine Hays, editor in chief of AphroChic
“The design is critical, but how you communicate your design is just as important,” said Ms. Wood. “It’s about telling your story.”
The competition also seeks to restrict a reliance on technology, noted Ms. Wood.
“We try to choose a design challenge that requires students to use their hands and to draw. It’s incredibly important to be able to sketch and draw on the fly, especially when around clients.”
When the jury panel gathered to deliberate on the presentations and choose a winner, Ms. Getachew noted that all of the judges had the same top three; Ms. Ammidon’s design presentation, however, showed the strongest design thinking and design execution.
Ms. Ammidon said she attended the event for the first time this year with zero expectations and a willingness to make industry connections and to have fun while trying to something new.
“The opportunities for personal projects outside of school are limited, particularly considering the lack of time we have outside of schoolwork,” said Ms. Ammidon. “I wanted to see what I could produce under pressure, and this was a fun environment to do that in. The experience really taught me to work quickly, make decisions very quickly, and trust in what I’m doing.”
Ms. Ammidon is working closely with Getachew to refine her design and explore the concept further. Once the design is finished, Ms. Getachew will send Ammidon’s drawing to her artisan partners in Ethiopia for production. Once in production, every online purchase will contribute to two groundbreaking organizations based in Ethiopia, imagine1day and Eden Projects.
This event, although fleeting and held just once each year, is no ordinary student event; rather, it provides an accelerated knowledge forum for students to interact with industry professionals and show off their skills in a constructive, fast-paced environment. What could be more inspiring and useful than that?