Interior Design Schools

Lauren Manorek of the interior design school at Harcum College in Pennsylvania took home third place in an annual student design competition.

Manorek took home the award in November for placing in the 10^th Annual KlingStubbins Student Design Competition.

KlingStubbons is a design firm specializing in everything from interior design to landscaping and hosts the seven hour long competition. Students from various interior design schools are given a model building shell and told to “design a commercial space”. This involves floor plans, concept sketches, materials and finishing textures.

The interior design student was forced to beat out fierce competitors. A report on Patch.com noted that the toughest competitors for Manorek were students hailing from fashion design schools across the nation such as Arcadia University, Drexel, and Moore College. She also had to face a handful of her peers from the interior design school at Harcum.

“I’m very proud of Lauren for placing third in this competition. In her time at Harcum, she has developed great design skills, as well as a strong capacity to think creatively, so this award is well deserved. Lauren is a strong example of how Harcum students turn what they learn into real-world accomplishments,” Harcum Interior Design Program Director, Heidi Techner told a college publication.

Manorek’s win marks the second award in as many years for her interior design school at the competition, although Harcum College is no stranger to students that overcome the harshest competitors. On the heels of the interior design student’s success, Harcum’s women’s volleyball and basketball teams were recently in the news for stellar performances.

Harcum College, host to the interior design school at which Manorek studies, is a two-year college established in the early 1900’s. The interior design studies program allows for full or part time enrollment and is focused on hands-on learning, exploration, and critical thinking skills that will produce outstanding professionals in their industry.

The architecture and interior design colleges at the University of Missouri have provided students with a better way to study their concepts.

The college has implemented a new technology that allows students studying to become and interior designer or architect the opportunity to view their designs as a three-dimensional, realistic model.

Interior design students who are just starting out may benefit from the Immersive Visualization Lab (iLab) the most. One of the challenges of successful interior design is visualizing how a design concept will look and “feel” when it is implemented in a real life setting. It can be difficult to get the aesthetic feeling of an interior design from a small scaled model or computer monitor-sized graphic. The state-of-the-art iLab is a program in which the students can create an exterior or interior design and then view it, life sized.

Bimal Balakrishnan, an assistant professor at the college, told the Columbia Tribune recently that students will be able to immerse themselves in their interior designs and make changes to their concepts as required.

“The iLab will not only allow students to experience their designs from the inside, but they also will be able to view their designs in a much larger scale and experiment with different textures and styles in real time,” Balakrishnan said.

The iLab’s programming is compatible with various programs used at interior design colleges to draft plans and it even allows for installing modeling components that include furniture and décor.

The students of interior design and architecture at the University of Missouri started using the iLab this year to design a supposed school building for the college. Though their design isn’t set to become reality in the near future, it may turn into a finals project for the students according to a representative of the college.

The cost of the iLab was approximately $85,000 and may be used in the future for city planning, including new constructions, renovations, and crowd control for large events.

An interior design school in Dubai just held its annual competition for interior design students.

The competition, which showcases work from the students of American University in Dubai’s School of Architecture, Art and Design, is held in downtown Dubai. This year the competition was titled “AUD Best Interior Design Studio Project”.

The interior design school’s competition is coordinated by assistant professor Annamaria Lambri and associate professor Albert Falhoury, both of the Architecture and Interior Design school at AUD.

One hundred students who were enrolled during the fall semester in the interior design school were involved in the competition. The first place prize went to a group of interior design students in their third year at the school and their creation, “The Steve Jobs Project”. The Steve Jobs Project was created by students Sarah Azmy, Reem Moussalli, Silvia Nagy, and Erum Kamal, who created the design as required by their curriculum.

The second place honor went to a group of fourth year students who designed a concept called “Oppositio”. That group included Alysha Nasir, Ramy Makhaly, and Asmaa Said.

Third place was awarded to a group of third year students at the interior design school for their creation titled “Slanted House”, a project created by Rana Ahmed, Rahma Moustafa, Inji Khalil, Marwa Al Shaibani, and Farah Ataya.

The interior design school at AUD is focused on producing career oriented professionals in their field of study by integrating art and design with business sense and the latest technologies.

AUD also hosts a score of other technical degree programs in Dubai in addition to its interior design school. The school hosted nearly 3,000 students in the past year and the student body was represented by nearly one hundred nationalities. According to its website, AUD is an American Institution in Dubai that specializes in higher learning curriculum that is equivalent to the best institutions residing in the States.

An interior design college in Chicago presented its students with a contest being held by 215 West to design the exterior of the apartments in a way that draws pedestrians into their lobby.

The students at Harrington College of Design paired up to spearhead their challenge and produced design ideas that impressed the President of Jupiter Communities, LLC; the company that owns the apartment tower community.

The students at the interior design college began their challenge by drawing out their concepts for illustration and predicting the costs of their designs. They had to consider all facets of the building’s exterior, including considerations in how the elements will affect their designs. Other considerations with which the students become familiar during their coursework include appeal, lighting, and legalities surrounding exterior design. The city ordinances regarding signs and lighting, as well as electrical availability were imperative to the design process.

The projects provided the interior design students with an opportunity to learn about the business aspects of interior designing, as well. Although many of the skills required for a successful career in interior design are taught in the classroom, weighing budget considerations against the design concept is a skill best learned through real-world application.

The company ultimately chose a design by a couple of students that was “practical and effective as well as memorable” according to Kellie DeVilbiss, the President of Jupiter Communities. The design was also chosen because it would work best to garner attention in the day and in the night.

The winning interior design students, Erin Costello and Justin Ko, involved vertical banners around the entrance to the building and instituted lighting to draw attention to the entryway. Their design is also flexible, allowing 215 West the ability to update the appeal by changing the banners and lighting when they choose to do so.

The American Society of Interior Designers Foundation recently announced that the society’s 2012 season for scholarships and awards is now open.

The society is inviting professionals in the industry and interior design students to begin applications to win scholarships and awards that are valued in total at $23,000.

Students at interior design colleges do not have much time left and applications are due by March 12th of next year.

The six scholarships and awards vary in value and include financial assistance in addition to full scholarship awards.

Among those awards will be the Joel Polsky Prize is awarded to entries that fulfill the needs of the public, interior designers and students in educational research, behavior, and more. An academic achievement award of the same name will be awarded to an outstanding interior design student for his or her research project which deals in similar topics.

Scholarships through the society’s Legacy Scholarships program will award $4000 to an undergraduate and graduate interior design student.

All students in their last or next to last year of interior design school are eligible to win the two Legacy Scholarships, provided they are attending a school where they will eventually obtain a degree.

The 2012 season will also award other grants including the Irene Winifred Eno Grant worth $5000. In order to win this award, an interior design student or professional must be actively participating in the creation of an interior design project that is intended to provide a better standard of health, safety or welfare.

Another grant, the David Barrett Memorial Scholarship is valued at $12,000 and will recognized the employment of classic interior design methods and appeal in furniture, fabrics, and overall designs.

The details of each grant and scholarship application can be found at the society’s website.

The interior design program at Florida State University was named 10th in the nation by Design Intelligence.

The 2012 “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools” also ranked an FSU professor of interior design classes among the 25 Most Admired Educators, as well.

Design intelligence ranks public and private interior design colleges and programs based on feedback from interior design firms around the country who hire graduates from various schools and programs.

To analyze interior design class effectiveness, the publication interviews hundreds of hiring companies and professionals. Design intelligence asks about their opinion on which schools are best preparing interior design students for success in the industry based on the firms’ experience in the past five years.

Florida’s interior design college fell into the top 10 with other respected schools like Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, and Cornell University.

Professor Lisa Waxman, the FSU professor that won a spot in the list’s 25 Most Admired Educators, attributes the interior design program’s success to their desire to develop professional interior designers who are responsive to human needs.

Waxman also said that they seek to develop professionals “who hold the world’s natural resources in high regard, and who design functional as well as beautiful spaces that improve the quality of life.”

FSU’s interior design school provides complementary studies in sustainability and students often become leaders in environmentally friendly designs after graduation.

The school focuses on creating successful professional interior designers by showing attention to industry changes and the growing job of interior designers – to bring a sense of harmony to people who spend most of their time indoors.

Waxman said that the interior design college makes it known to students that interior design influences performance and well being. The students at Florida’s design college are regularly tasked with researching such information in order to evolve their designs with the current realities.

Interior design classes at ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts placed among the top 20 design program in the nation in the 12th annual American’s Best Architecture & Design Schools rankings by Design Intelligence.

The interior design school’s undergraduate program ranked 8th in the nation.

ASU’s architecture program came in at 17th, beating out other prestigious programs at Princeton and Texas A&M, and their industrial design program ranked ninth.

Three of the design college’s design programs were ranked in the top 20 for design and architectural course studies in the country.  Design Intelligence, an industry publication, produces the rankings of top tier interior design colleges and architecture schools in the country, as determined by the top firms in the nation.

The firms consider interior design classes and programs at the schools which are doing the best job to prepare students to excel in interior design.

Darren Petrucci, the director of the design college at ASU said that the criterion for making the list is significant to him, according to a university publication. “…four out of five of those firms are ranking our graduates in the top 10 or top 20 of the nation, ’’Petrucci told the paper.

America’s Best Architecture and Design serves as thorough insight into the most elite interior design schools around the country.  The firms base their opinions on real-world work, adding to the credibility of claims about the school’s architecture, industrial, and interior design classes. They complete an in-depth survey with ratings contingent upon the quality work completed by new employees that completed studies at any of the interior design schools.

There were 360 firms that participated in the evaluation and placed ASU’s interior design classes in the top 20 also named the school number one in industrial design on the basis of research and theory. The department also won fourth in the nation as rated by the leaders at other schools.

ASU is considered one of the best collaborative design schools in the country, producing students from interior design, architecture, and industrial design who are thoroughly cross-trained in disciplines that intersect with what they’ve learned in their own studies.

Interior design students at Kansas State College have had a busy semester with multiple big-hitting interior design projects that required the full attention of the students.

Several challenges were presented to seniors and underclassmen of the interior design program that offer a unique opportunity for students to work with real-life clients and learn the challenges of responding to the personal desires and opinions of the customer.

In October, seniors at the interior design school were afforded the unique opportunity to leave their mark on one of the university’s student halls to update an old design from a past student project.

“I told the students about it. They had two weeks to define the problem and come up with a design solution.” said assistant professor of interior design, Hyung-Chan Kim who is also the interior design class’ instructor.

Students at the interior design school met with the faculty to get a better idea of what they expected from the design and students soon got to work creating the concepts.

In all, six groups of seniors presented their ideas to faculty members, but they will have to wait until next semester for feedback. The interior design school faculty will have to discuss the ideas and the available budget for renovations.

The renovation project was one of many projects presented to students this year. Students in a separate studio at the school were surprised with a high-profile semester project on their first day of class.

Junior Emily Galliart told a staff writer at the Kansas Sate Collegian that she was surprised to see her professor in a Santa costume on the first day of class. “We didn’t know what was going on. We had no idea about the project, but then it became an incredibly great thing.” she remarked.

The surprise project was to create an interior design to decorate Kansas State President’s and First Lady’s home for the holidays and the winning team of students created a design that included Christmas past and present, filled with the family’s favorite holiday memories.

An interior design school in New York recently announced its 4^th graduate program in three years.

The New York School of Interior Design is set to launch a one year professional studies degree program on the interior design of healthcare facilities in the fall of 2012.

The degree program will be available for interior design professionals in an effort to ready the industry for the rapidly growing needs of the healthcare industry.

Facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and specialty health centers are the focus of the interior design school’s new program. According to industry trends, interior design students are set to see new opportunities arise in all facets of design in this industry.

The New York interior design school’s new program will be headed up by Victor Dadra, a design expert, and staffed by numerous healthcare professionals. The course will contain elements that compliment the professional knowledge of students by focusing on the aesthetics of healing environments while inserting key knowledge about how healthcare businesses work.

Coursework will include education on interior design research specific to the industry, the history of healthcare design, patient environment and behaviors, and how to apply known design techniques to a facility’s interior design.

Elements to be woven throughout the course of the year-long program include environmentally friendly design, the impacts of lighting on work productivity, as well as the impact of design on patient health.