Atelier Fall 2021

Fall 2021

Design Is a Global Language INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI WORKING & THRIVING IN THE US FROM RUSSIA: ILYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2) INTERIOR PROJECT DESIGNER / ASSOCIATE, PERKINS&WILL / NYSID INSTRUCTOR

New York School of Interior Design

atelier FALL 2021 VOL. 3 / NO. 2 PRESIDENT David Sprouls EDITORIAL AND MARKETING DIRECTOR Laura Catlan WRITER AND MANAGING EDITOR Jennifer Dorr EDITORIAL ADVISOR Christopher Spinelli GRAPHIC DESIGN JAK Design, NYC COVER PHOTOGRAPHY Matthew Septimus PRINTING JMT Communications Jeff Tucker, President ADDITIONAL STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS SUPPORT Leslie Robinson Natalie Utuciyan

New York School of Interior Design 170 East 70 Street New York, NY 10021 Atelier is published twice a year, by the Office of External Relations, for the alumni and friends of the New York School of Interior Design. It is printed on recycled paper with vegetable inks.

CONTENTS The streets of New York, which felt like a ghost town a year ago, are filling again, brimming with energy. Our students from other states and nations, most of whom studied from their homes during the height of the pandemic, have returned to the city.

This fall, NYSID is open for in-person study for any student who has been vaccinated or has an approved exemption. There’s a lot to feel optimistic about. The pandemic has changed how we live, work, and study. This is an exciting moment in the history of design, when designers will be challenged to adapt to new realities.

In the most abnormal of times, NYSID was able to keep delivering the highest quality design education in the safest ways possible. When the pandemic devastated New York in 2020, we questioned how we’d endure as a higher education institution.

A year and a half later, we’re stronger than ever. Overall, NYSID’s enrollment this year is the highest it’s been in almost a decade. Our faculty’s rapid adaptation to online and Hy-Flex learning propelled the institution forward. We did not replace in-person students with online students. Instead, we created a Hy-Flex learning environment that gave people options. Going forward, NYSID will offer more flexibility than it ever did before the pandemic.

That’s why we’re devoting this issue to moving forward with the new normal at NYSID. We’re excited that our international students once again have the benefit of the living classroom that is NYC. One of the consistent advantages of NYSID as an academic institution is its ability to attract students from afar. Whether they come from somewhere else in the US or somewhere else in the world, our students’ experiences are an educational asset. Their diverse perspectives multiply what the faculty can explore. We believe it’s never acceptable to take ideas and motifs from other cultures without understanding where they come from. The number and variety of international students in our classrooms help their peers gain a true respect for other cultures’ design traditions. In our cover story, “Design Is a Global Language,” we celebrate five international alumni who have gone on to build brilliant careers in the US. Another way NYSID is moving forward is by continuing to weave sustainability into every course, defining it as a foundation of interior design education. We’re planning a digital and in-person symposium for interior design educators from all over the country called “Teaching Green” for October 8-9, 2021. It’s the right time to do it, as this year marks the 10th anniversary of NYSID’s Masters of Professional Studies in Sustainable Interior Environments. Eric Corey Freed, one of the symposium’s four keynote speakers, shares his expertise in a preview of his talk on “The Future of Sustainable Design.” Another of the symposium’s keynote speakers, alumna Jennifer Graham, an industry leader not only in equity, but also in repurposing the materials from building sites, is featured in our cover story on international alumni.

Thanks to all of you who turned up for our first virtual gala, at which we raised money for our scholarship funds and honored Alex Papachristidis with the Albert Hadley Lifetime Achievement Award, Corey Damen Jenkins with the Larry Kravet Design Industry Leadership Award, and alumna Nina Farmer with the Rising Star Award (sponsored by The Shade Store). We exceeded our fundraising goal and couldn’t have accomplished this without gala co-chairs Chesie Breen, Alexa Hampton, David Kleinberg, Susan Nagle, Betsey Ruprecht, and Maria Spears, trustees of NYSID. The passion of this community never ceases to amaze me.

May your fall be filled with learning, opportunity, innovation, and beauty.

FEATURES

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18

Design Is a Global Language

Social Impact Design in Rwanda

International Alumni Who Have Built Exciting Careers in the US

Alumna Christelle Muhimpundu’s work for MASS Design Group

MONA NAHM

WELCOME

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24

A Color Story

The Future of Sustainable Design

How NYSID Teaches Color, and a Bold Career in Color

A Chat with Eric Corey Freed, a Keynote Speaker of “Teaching Green”

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DEPARTMENTS 2 VISUAL THINKER 28 GIVING & GALA 32 COMMENCEMENT 2021 34 LAYOUT 38 PORTFOLIO A Design Educator’s Impact Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal’s Message Upon Retirement

46 IN MEMORIAM 47 LEADERSHIP 48 NEXT AT NYSID

To submit story ideas or comment, email atelier@NYSID.edu.

NYSID.edu/atelier

DAVID SPROULS, PRESIDENT, NYSID

FRONT COVER: IIYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2), INTERIOR PROJECT DESIGNER / ASSOCIATE, PERKINS&WILL. BACK INSIDE COVER: THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS), FOUNDER / OWNER, VIRSERIUS STUDIO. BOTH PHOTOS: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

CONTENTS FEATURES

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18

Social Impact Design in Rwanda Alumna Christelle Muhimpundu’s work for MASS Design Group

MONA NAHM

Design Is a Global Language International Alumni Who Have Built Exciting Careers in the US

20

24

A Color Story

The Future of Sustainable Design

How NYSID Teaches Color, and a Bold Career in Color

A Chat with Eric Corey Freed, a Keynote Speaker of “Teaching Green”

26

DEPARTMENTS

2 VISUAL THINKER

28 GIVING & GALA 32 COMMENCEMENT 2021 34 LAYOUT 38 PORTFOLIO A Design Educator’s Impact Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal’s Message Upon Retirement

46 IN MEMORIAM 47 LEADERSHIP 48 NEXT AT NYSID

FRONT COVER: ILYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2), INTERIOR PROJECT DESIGNER / ASSOCIATE, PERKINS&WILL. BACK INSIDE COVER: THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS), FOUNDER / OWNER, VIRSERIUS STUDIO. BOTH PHOTOS: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

VISUAL THINKER / Design Deconstructed NYSID alumna Peti Lau ’09 (AAS) is the owner and principal of Peti Lau Inc., based in Los Angeles, California. A former opera singer who has lived all over the world, Lau garnered attention on the recent season of HGTV’s Design Star Next Gen. Her signature style, which she calls AristoFreak™, is globalist, romantic, elegant, eclectic, and entirely her own. Lau accumulated the experience that frees her to be daring by working at multiple design firms, including Cullman & Kravis, Jeff Lincoln, Huniford Design Studio, and iCrave. Her designs have been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Wall Street Journal Off Duty, Apartment Therapy, and NYC&G.

1

The black credenza from J Alexander Furniture has bronze disks that create a pattern of circles in combination with the tiny globes of the fierce-looking paperweight and the medium globes of the ’60s black and white lamp that both sit atop it.

2

Photo by Alex Prager, whom Lau calls, “Cindy Sherman for a new generation.”

3

Eighties vintage rainbow neon sign from Pasadena Antique & Design.

4

The black Nero Marquina marble accessories, such as the vase, add opulence.

5

These brass chairs have Holland & Sherry velvet on the seat and Edelman’s hair on hide on the back. The vermilion color evokes rock and roll, sexiness, and abundance.

6

Limited edition rug from the LA street artist RETNA picks up the pattern in the Kelly Wearstler Channels wallpaper and the zigzag of the neon sign.

BRITTANY AMBRIDGE

Peti Lau designed this dining room, in a home set in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, for Alex Pall, half of the Grammy Award-winning DJ duo The Chainsmokers. Lau used to be an opera singer and she still thinks like a musician.

She says, “A chord consists of three notes: base, medium, and high. I apply a similar principle to my designs in regards to how I pattern-mix with proportion and scale. I like to have three ‘notes’ of a pattern: small, medium, and large.

This is how I create harmony between many eclectic elements in a space.” This technique lends her rooms unity and has made her fearless about combining eras and styles, for example, the juxtaposition of a contemporary crystal chandelier and a cheeky 1980s rainbow neon sign. Pall is an avid contemporary art collector, and Lau designed the interior of this home to show off his collection. Lau says, “I thought about the conversations between different artists and musicians that would take place at Alex’s table. I wanted the space to spark conversation.”

BRITTANY AMBRIDGE

A Fearless Mix of Patterns

VISUAL THINKER / Design Deconstructed NYSID alumna Peti Lau ’09 (AAS) is the owner and principal of Peti Lau Inc., based in Los Angeles, California. A former opera singer who has lived all over the world, Lau garnered attention on the recent season of HGTV’s Design Star Next Gen. Her signature style, which she calls AristoFreak™, is globalist, romantic, elegant, eclectic, and entirely her own. Lau accumulated the experience that frees her to be daring by working at multiple design firms, including Cullman & Kravis, Jeff Lincoln, Huniford Design Studio, and iCrave. Her designs have been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Wall Street Journal Off Duty, Apartment Therapy, and NYC&G.

1

The black credenza from J Alexander Furniture has bronze disks that create a pattern of circles in combination with the tiny globes of the fierce-looking paperweight and the medium globes of the ’60s black and white lamp that both sit atop it.

2

Photo by Alex Prager, whom Lau calls, “Cindy Sherman for a new generation.”

3

Eighties vintage rainbow neon sign from Pasadena Antique & Design.

4

The black Nero Marquina marble accessories, such as the vase, add opulence.

5

These brass chairs have Holland & Sherry velvet on the seat and Edelman’s hair on hide on the back. The vermilion color evokes rock and roll, sexiness, and abundance.

6

Limited edition rug from the LA street artist RETNA picks up the pattern in the Kelly Wearstler Channels wallpaper and the zigzag of the neon sign.

BRITTANY AMBRIDGE

Peti Lau designed this dining room, in a home set in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, for Alex Pall, half of the Grammy Award-winning DJ duo The Chainsmokers. Lau used to be an opera singer and she still thinks like a musician.

She says, “A chord consists of three notes: base, medium, and high. I apply a similar principle to my designs in regards to how I pattern-mix with proportion and scale. I like to have three ‘notes’ of a pattern: small, medium, and large.

This is how I create harmony between many eclectic elements in a space.” This technique lends her rooms unity and has made her fearless about combining eras and styles, for example, the juxtaposition of a contemporary crystal chandelier and a cheeky 1980s rainbow neon sign. Pall is an avid contemporary art collector, and Lau designed the interior of this home to show off his collection. Lau says, “I thought about the conversations between different artists and musicians that would take place at Alex’s table. I wanted the space to spark conversation.”

BRITTANY AMBRIDGE

A Fearless Mix of Patterns

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FEATURES

Design Is a Global Language Five International Alumni on Forging Dynamic Careers in the US

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YSID alumni Therese Virserius ’03 (AAS), founder / owner, Virserius Studio; Jennifer Graham ’85 (BFA), principal, Perkins&Will; Ruoxi Cui ’13 (MFA1), interior designer, WRNS Studio; Ilya Pulyaev ’17 (MFA2), interior project designer / associate, Perkins&Will and NYSID instructor; and Myoung Joo Chun ’02 (MFA2), director of graduate interior architecture, Endicott College / owner, The Space Design, on what brought them to the US to study and what kept them here.

NYSID students hail from 41 countries. In a typical year, 39% of graduate students and 11% of undergraduates at NYSID come from outside the US. International students are drawn to the College by NYSID’s reputation, and also by the living classroom of New York City. Because of NYSID’s geographic diversity, students are exposed to other cultures and ways of living through their peers. Travel and the exploration of other cultures with empathy, respect, and curiosity are integral to the NYSID experience. The College’s design history courses “stack” into travel study experiences curated by design history experts.

Says Ellen Fisher, NYSID’s dean and vice president of academic affairs, “A person needs to be immersed in the world in order to design for it.”

Many of the international students who attend NYSID find great jobs (and often, love) in the US. They stay, and build impressive careers. This is the story of five NYSID students who grew up abroad, and who have carved out careers in interior design and related disciplines in the US. Their work is a testament to the fact that this great nation has always been improved by immigrants. Says NYSID’s President, David Sprouls, “If we want the design of this nation to thrive, we must continue to open ourselves to the world.”

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ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Design Is a Global Language Five International Alumni on Forging Dynamic Careers in the US

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YSID alumni Therese Virserius ’03 (AAS), founder / owner, Virserius Studio; Jennifer Graham ’85 (BFA), principal, Perkins&Will; Ruoxi Cui ’13 (MFA1), interior designer, WRNS Studio; IIya Pulyaev ’17 (MFA2), interior project designer / associate, Perkins&Will and NYSID instructor; and Myoung Joo Chun ’02 (MFA2), director of graduate interior architecture, Endicott College / owner, The Space Design, on what brought them to the US to study and what kept them here.

NYSID students hail from 41 countries. In a typical year, 39% of graduate students and 11% of undergraduates at NYSID come from outside the US. International students are drawn to the College by NYSID’s reputation, and also by the living classroom of New York City. Because of NYSID’s geographic diversity, students are exposed to other cultures and ways of living through their peers. Travel and the exploration of other cultures with empathy, respect, and curiosity are integral to the NYSID experience. The College’s design history courses “stack” into travel study experiences curated by design history experts.

Says Ellen Fisher, NYSID’s dean and vice president of academic affairs, “A person needs to be immersed in the world in order to design for it.”

Many of the international students who attend NYSID find great jobs (and often, love) in the US. They stay, and build impressive careers. This is the story of five NYSID students who grew up abroad, and who have carved out careers in interior design and related disciplines in the US. Their work is a testament to the fact that this great nation has always been improved by immigrants. Says NYSID’s President, David Sprouls, “If we want the design of this nation to thrive, we must continue to open ourselves to the world.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: VIRSERIUS STUDIO, WRNS STUDIO, THE SPACE DESIGN, RAMSA, AND ROGER LANDIVAR (PERKINS&WILL) FOR CURBED “THE COVID MEMORIAL PROJECT.”

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THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS) Founder / Owner, Virserius Studio From Sweden Perhaps there is no one better equipped to describe what a “global designer” is than Therese Virserius. She speaks six languages. She heads Virserius Studio, a luxury hospitality interior design and architecture firm she founded that has offices in New York and Paris, and conducts business in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Her company’s award-winning hotel designs include the Hotel Africa in Tunisia, The W Atlanta, Midtown, and the Renaissance Paris La Défense Hotel. She was born and raised in Sweden and got a BA in law and Mandarin in her native country, followed by a degree in Mandarin in Beijing, China, all before completing her AAS in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design.

FEATURES

“To be a global designer is to be constantly educating yourself,” she says. “It’s to approach your work with the curiosity of a traveler and a researcher. When you are designing a space, you have to explore how the people who live there eat, worship, celebrate, and live. You have to completely immerse yourself in the culture. This will make you a more tolerant human and a more layered designer.”

After finishing her degree at Beijing Language and Culture University in 1998, Virserius was recruited for a management position at IKEA in Shanghai. She spent her 20s immersed in Asian culture as China modernized at breakneck speed. She says, “Shanghai opened my eyes to the possibilities of global design. I got to see how IKEA affected people in China who had no exposure to Western design, to witness how they just took to this Swedish shopping experience.” Virserius also fell in love with an American while living in Shanghai and followed him to New York. She had spent most of her 20s in China, so she reports that she had profound “culture shock” when she came to the US. She spent six months researching what she wanted to do next. She had been a painter for years, and she wanted to take her love of line and color into three dimensions, so she set her sights on interior design.

She says, “I found NYSID, the perfect school for me because it caters to people for whom design is not necessarily the first career. I wanted to have that diversity of people with varied experiences around me. NYSID offers the practicality of technical skills, but also lets you experience design history and theory.” The intimacy of the small school enabled her to form close relationships with

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 7

OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM: LOBBY OF THE W ATLANTA MIDTOWN BY VIRSERIUS STUDIO. ABOVE: THREE ROOMS AT THE W ATLANTA MIDTOWN

BY VIRSERIUS STUDIO.

her professors. She says the late NYSID design history professor Judith Gura, and her former studio instructor (and longtime NYSID Associate Dean) Barbara Lowenthal were tremendous influences on her.

Virserius landed an internship at Jeffrey Beers International. After her graduation from NYSID, she was hired full time and worked there for a year and a half. She was aware that the standard advice to emerging designers is to work at an established firm for 3 to 5 years before striking out on one’s own. However, Virserius is an entrepreneur at heart and she felt restless. She says, “I had so much energy. I didn’t want to take the normal, slower path.” She founded Virserius Studio in 2004. She says, “My company got its big break when I did City Center (casino and hotel) in Las Vegas with the architect Rafael Viñoly.

The job started in 2007 and finished in 2009 and was the largest private development in US history at that time.”

Virserius’ business is about word of mouth and just about every client who hires her becomes a repeat customer. She brought her sister, the fine-artist Regina Viserius, into the business for a project in Montreal that blossomed into other contracts, Hyatt’s Le Campus in Paris in 2014 and the NH Brussels Bloom Art Hotel in 2016. Her sister has been her

firm’s creative director since. Virserius Studio has a staff of 15. Therese Viserius says, “The majority of my employees come from NYSID or Pratt, international schools with people from different backgrounds. Diversity and cultural integration are highly important in design.” She adds, “NYSID hires can translate theory from pen to paper, and they can communicate abstract ideas in a way the client can relate to.” Among the NYSID alumni working at Virserius Studio is Jihee Youn ’13 (MFA1), the firm’s studio director who has been with them for over 10 years.

It’s difficult to define the “style” of Virserius Studio because the team takes such an anthropological and historical approach to place with every project. What can be said is that Virserius designs are not Swedish minimalism and are, to use the words of the firm’s founder, “the opposite of cookie cutter.” Therese Virserius says, “Hospitality design must have a strong focus on storytelling so that every employee in the hotel can walk through the space and tell the story of what makes the place unique, so even the chef can connect the menu to the story.”

Virserius and her team are currently at work on the Waldorf Astoria Arizona Biltmore. She believes her task in updating this hotel is to tell the story of the space’s

6 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS) Founder / Owner, Virserius Studio From Sweden Perhaps there is no one better equipped to describe what a “global designer” is than Therese Virserius. She speaks six languages. She heads Virserius Studio, a luxury hospitality interior design and architecture firm she founded that has offices in New York and Paris, and conducts business in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Her company’s award-winning hotel designs include the Hotel Africa in Tunisia, The W Atlanta, Midtown, and the Renaissance Paris La Défense Hotel. She was born and raised in Sweden and got a BA in law and Mandarin in her native country, followed by a degree in Mandarin in Beijing, China, all before completing her AAS in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design.

FEATURES

“To be a global designer is to be constantly educating yourself,” she says. “It’s to approach your work with the curiosity of a traveler and a researcher. When you are designing a space, you have to explore how the people who live there eat, worship, celebrate, and live. You have to completely immerse yourself in the culture. This will make you a more tolerant human and a more layered designer.”

After finishing her degree at Beijing Language and Culture University in 1998, Virserius was recruited for a management position at IKEA in Shanghai. She spent her 20s immersed in Asian culture as China modernized at breakneck speed. She says, “Shanghai opened my eyes to the possibilities of global design. I got to see how IKEA affected people in China who had no exposure to Western design, to witness how they just took to this Swedish shopping experience.” Virserius also fell in love with an American while living in Shanghai and followed him to New York. She had spent most of her 20s in China, so she reports that she had profound “culture shock” when she came to the US. She spent six months researching what she wanted to do next. She had been a painter for years, and she wanted to take her love of line and color into three dimensions, so she set her sights on interior design.

She says, “I found NYSID, the perfect school for me because it caters to people for whom design is not necessarily the first career. I wanted to have that diversity of people with varied experiences around me. NYSID offers the practicality of technical skills, but also lets you experience design history and theory.” The intimacy of the small school enabled her to form close relationships with

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 7

OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM: LOBBY OF THE W ATLANTA MIDTOWN BY VIRSERIUS STUDIO. ABOVE: THREE ROOMS AT THE W ATLANTA MIDTOWN

BY VIRSERIUS STUDIO.

her professors. She says the late NYSID design history professor Judith Gura, and her former studio instructor (and longtime NYSID Associate Dean) Barbara Lowenthal were tremendous influences on her.

Virserius landed an internship at Jeffrey Beers International. After her graduation from NYSID, she was hired full time and worked there for a year and a half. She was aware that the standard advice to emerging designers is to work at an established firm for 3 to 5 years before striking out on one’s own. However, Virserius is an entrepreneur at heart and she felt restless. She says, “I had so much energy. I didn’t want to take the normal, slower path.” She founded Virserius Studio in 2004. She says, “My company got its big break when I did City Center (casino and hotel) in Las Vegas with the architect Rafael Viñoly.

The job started in 2007 and finished in 2009 and was the largest private development in US history at that time.”

Virserius’ business is about word of mouth and just about every client who hires her becomes a repeat customer. She brought her sister, the fine-artist Regina Viserius, into the business for a project in Montreal that blossomed into other contracts, Hyatt’s Le Campus in Paris in 2014 and the NH Brussels Bloom Art Hotel in 2016. Her sister has been her

firm’s creative director since. Virserius Studio has a staff of 15. Therese Viserius says, “The majority of my employees come from NYSID or Pratt, international schools with people from different backgrounds. Diversity and cultural integration are highly important in design.” She adds, “NYSID hires can translate theory from pen to paper, and they can communicate abstract ideas in a way the client can relate to.” Among the NYSID alumni working at Virserius Studio is Jihee Youn ’13 (MFA1), the firm’s studio director who has been with them for over 10 years.

It’s difficult to define the “style” of Virserius Studio because the team takes such an anthropological and historical approach to place with every project. What can be said is that Virserius designs are not Swedish minimalism and are, to use the words of the firm’s founder, “the opposite of cookie cutter.” Therese Virserius says, “Hospitality design must have a strong focus on storytelling so that every employee in the hotel can walk through the space and tell the story of what makes the place unique, so even the chef can connect the menu to the story.”

Virserius and her team are currently at work on the Waldorf Astoria Arizona Biltmore. She believes her task in updating this hotel is to tell the story of the space’s

8 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

glamourous history in a way that accommodates the way people live now. She says, “The Biltmore was a refuge for the superstars of the ’30s and ’40s, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, and many others. The original designer, Albert Chase McArthur, was a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, who consulted on the design. Our job is to retain the original influences while elevating the design for the 21st century.” Her team is designing poolside “cottages” (ultraluxurious guest accommodations), the Catalina “adults only” pool, the Catalina Bar, and the Wright Bar. Almost every element is custom, from Biltmore Blocks cast in the exact way they were in the ’30s, to mosaic pool poufs from Bisazza. For the Catalina Bar, custom-made Spanish tiles define the different circulations. Virserius Studio broke the entire space into different outdoor living rooms with fire pits and banquettes to accommodate gatherings of various sizes. Of the Wright Bar, Therese Virserius says, “We studied historical photos so we could break down the space to recreate the historical circulation. It’s a small bar with crafted cocktails, but today we have to be able to accommodate a big conference with 500 people without making this feel like a big sprawl, so we designed smaller living areas with balconettes that encourage more intimate conversation.”

Virserius’ advice to designers during the pandemic and beyond is this: “Even if you can’t travel now, don’t stop studying culture. Walk around your city, do research on the internet, and study how people live.”

TOP AND LEFT: THERESE VIRSERIUS’ RENDERINGS OF THE LAWN SEATING. AND WRIGHT BAR FOR THE ARIZONA BILTMORE. BELOW: A SUITE IN RENAISSANCE PARIS LA DÉFENSE HOTEL.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

JENNIFER GRAHAM ’85 (BFA) Principal / Senior Project Manager, Perkins&Will From Barbados When Jennifer Graham is asked to promote equity, fairness, or social justice, she says “yes.” She’s a principal at Perkins&Will’s New York Office, managing multiple workplace teams, as well as the single mother of teenage twins, yet she gives of herself to causes unceasingly.

“Service is my way of life,” she says, “I live by a credo I grew up with: The more you give, the more you receive.”

Such was the case when her colleague at Perkins&Will, Principal & Architect Zena Howard, asked her to collaborate on a memorial to celebrate the essential workers of the pandemic. The challenge was the brainchild of New York magazine journalist Justin Davidson, who asked key artists and designers to imagine small memorials around the city. Graham and Howard’s client was a delivery worker named Otoniel from Guatemala. He described a protest the delivery workers organized in October 2020, to bring attention to the loss of their tips from the delivery app companies, at the West 72nd Street subway station. Otoniel told the story of a stormy day when he biked and carted a heavy load of Clorox and soap on his back up the stairs of a public housing development. Otoniel was fatigued and disheartened after recovering from a bout of what was probably COVID-19. He was drenched, but when he reached the doorway of his destination, he realized there was an elderly woman inside waiting for the necessary supplies he was delivering. Graham says, “He realized as many trials as he’d been through, he still was providing an essential service to another human being.” This was the moment that inspired Graham’s vision for the installation.

FALL 2021 | 9

She says, “I was blending the images in my head and I told Zena I could just see it: Otoniel driving through the rainy streets on his bike, but instead of finding the protest at 72nd Street, he would find a tall, bronze memorial in his honor. At its center would be a hand reaching toward another in the doorway, with a box between them representing the acts of giving and receiving. I wanted the sculpture to be a relatable height. I wanted people to be able to touch it, rotate it, and be involved with it.” She and Howard dictated their specifications to Roger Landivar, an “enormously talented” Perkins&Will architect who created the renderings and video, set at West 72nd Street. The project was published in Curbed, and there are tentative plans to fund the construction of this memorial and others.

A senior manager and interior designer who also has an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, Graham is known for her keen negotiation skills, her mentoring, and her ability to build and manage teams that execute massive workplace projects seamlessly and beautifully.

She’s working on two corporate headquarters, one 360,000 square feet and the other 240,000 square feet, in a portfolio that includes six concurrent projects.

“ I often found that people were

trying to convince me that equality was the only path. We are not equal; we are each individual and different.

Equity is key.”

—JENNIFER GRAHAM ’85 (BFA)

JENNIFER GRAHAM LED THE TEAM THAT DESIGNED THESE OFFICES OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE. PHOTO: GARRETT ROWLAND

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glamourous history in a way that accommodates the way people live now. She says, “The Biltmore was a refuge for the superstars of the ’30s and ’40s, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, and many others. The original designer, Albert Chase McArthur, was a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, who consulted on the design. Our job is to retain the original influences while elevating the design for the 21st century.” Her team is designing poolside “cottages” (ultraluxurious guest accommodations), the Catalina “adults only” pool, the Catalina Bar, and the Wright Bar. Almost every element is custom, from Biltmore Blocks cast in the exact way they were in the ’30s, to mosaic pool poufs from Bisazza. For the Catalina Bar, custom-made Spanish tiles define the different circulations. Virserius Studio broke the entire space into different outdoor living rooms with fire pits and banquettes to accommodate gatherings of various sizes. Of the Wright Bar, Therese Virserius says, “We studied historical photos so we could break down the space to recreate the historical circulation. It’s a small bar with crafted cocktails, but today we have to be able to accommodate a big conference with 500 people without making this feel like a big sprawl, so we designed smaller living areas with balconettes that encourage more intimate conversation.”

Virserius’ advice to designers during the pandemic and beyond is this: “Even if you can’t travel now, don’t stop studying culture. Walk around your city, do research on the internet, and study how people live.”

TOP AND LEFT: THERESE VIRSERIUS’ RENDERINGS OF THE LAWN SEATING. AND WRIGHT BAR FOR THE ARIZONA BILTMORE. BELOW: A SUITE IN RENAISSANCE PARIS LA DÉFENSE HOTEL.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

JENNIFER GRAHAM ’85 (BFA) Principal / Senior Project Manager, Perkins&Will From Barbados When Jennifer Graham is asked to promote equity, fairness, or social justice, she says “yes.” She’s a principal at Perkins&Will’s New York Office, managing multiple workplace teams, as well as the single mother of teenage twins, yet she gives of herself to causes unceasingly.

“Service is my way of life,” she says, “I live by a credo I grew up with: The more you give, the more you receive.”

Such was the case when her colleague at Perkins&Will, Principal & Architect Zena Howard, asked her to collaborate on a memorial to celebrate the essential workers of the pandemic. The challenge was the brainchild of New York magazine journalist Justin Davidson, who asked key artists and designers to imagine small memorials around the city. Graham and Howard’s client was a delivery worker named Otoniel from Guatemala. He described a protest the delivery workers organized in October 2020, to bring attention to the loss of their tips from the delivery app companies, at the West 72nd Street subway station. Otoniel told the story of a stormy day when he biked and carted a heavy load of Clorox and soap on his back up the stairs of a public housing development. Otoniel was fatigued and disheartened after recovering from a bout of what was probably COVID-19. He was drenched, but when he reached the doorway of his destination, he realized there was an elderly woman inside waiting for the necessary supplies he was delivering. Graham says, “He realized as many trials as he’d been through, he still was providing an essential service to another human being.” This was the moment that inspired Graham’s vision for the installation.

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She says, “I was blending the images in my head and I told Zena I could just see it: Otoniel driving through the rainy streets on his bike, but instead of finding the protest at 72nd Street, he would find a tall, bronze memorial in his honor. At its center would be a hand reaching toward another in the doorway, with a box between them representing the acts of giving and receiving. I wanted the sculpture to be a relatable height. I wanted people to be able to touch it, rotate it, and be involved with it.” She and Howard dictated their specifications to Roger Landivar, an “enormously talented” Perkins&Will architect who created the renderings and video, set at West 72nd Street. The project was published in Curbed, and there are tentative plans to fund the construction of this memorial and others.

A senior manager and interior designer who also has an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, Graham is known for her keen negotiation skills, her mentoring, and her ability to build and manage teams that execute massive workplace projects seamlessly and beautifully.

She’s working on two corporate headquarters, one 360,000 square feet and the other 240,000 square feet, in a portfolio that includes six concurrent projects.

“ I often found that people were

trying to convince me that equality was the only path. We are not equal; we are each individual and different.

Equity is key.”

—JENNIFER GRAHAM ’85 (BFA)

JENNIFER GRAHAM LED THE TEAM THAT DESIGNED THESE OFFICES OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE. PHOTO: GARRETT ROWLAND

10 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 11

OPPOSITE PAGE: RENDERING BY ROGER LANDIVAR (PERKINS&WILL) FOR CURBED “THE COVID MEMORIAL PROJECT.” LEFT: THE OFFICES OF VIACOMCBS BY PERKINS&WILL. PHOTO: ERIC LAIGNEL. ABOVE: JENNIFER GRAHAM WITH COLLEAGUES AT AN LMNOP EVENT.

Despite the demands of her job, Graham has led her company’s Social Purpose Initiative (SRI) since 2016. The Perkins&Will SRI groups provide pro bono services for nonprofits for whom such services would be otherwise out of reach. They focus on projects that fulfill human needs, such as education, community facilities, affordable housing, or childcare. Graham also took on a co-leader role of the Perkins&Will NYO JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) Initiative this year. This group is creating best practices on how to bring justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion into the architecture and design process and sharing them with the industry. She is the vice president of action for the IIDA, a volunteer role in which she champions social purpose causes, coordinates designers’ community-based engagements with nonprofits, and provides education and programming about how to support increased cultural and ethnic diversity in the design profession. (This role came about when LMNOP NYC Inc., a professional development organization for the architecture and design community Graham founded in 2009, merged into the IIDA in 2020). One of the initiatives she started with LMNOP and will expand with IIDA is diverting furniture headed for landfill to nonprofit organizations. She’s also a member of NYSID’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commission. In this role, she hopes to be able to help NYSID attract more BIPOC faculty members. This is just the current equity and advocacy work she’s involved in!

Graham says, “What I want is a fair shot for everyone.”

She attributes her communal spirit to her upbringing in Barbados, a socially democratic country with socialized

medicine, strong schools, free education, and an adult literacy rate of 99.6 percent. “Barbados has a sharing culture.

If you have abundance, you share it with your neighbors,” she says. “For me, giving is cultural, and even more than that, it’s familial. Service is who we are in my family.”

Graham grew up the daughter of a Bajan doctor in a multicultural family that included her indigenous Peruvian grandmother. She says, “This little island is full of brown and black people who look like me. My family is black, brown, and white, and mixed. Barbados has its prejudices, but growing up in an environment where I was part of a majority helped me find my safe spaces when I moved to NYC. I had a happy childhood and was an avid bibliophile and an active equestrienne.” Dr. “Bertie” Graham, her father, was the first head of pediatrics at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the first developmental pediatrician on the island. He persuaded the government to fund preschool immunization for all children, leading to the elimination of diseases such as measles, diphtheria, and tetanus. Throughout his career, he championed deinstitutionalization and quality health care for the physically and developmentally challenged, supporting institutions that focused on health and welfare of disabled children in his country. The young Bertie Graham had been preparing to study architecture when his twin brother George, a medical student on his way to Cambridge, died of rheumatic fever. His grieving family wanted him to become a doctor, so Bertie gave up architecture and took up medicine. Perhaps that’s why when his daughter Jennifer expressed an interest in design after a family visit to New York City, he supported her every step of the way.

Graham’s pursuit of a career in interior design began when she entered NYSID’s BFA program in 1981. At NYSID, she says, “There were not many students who looked like me, but I felt totally accepted. I was initially shielded from overt discrimination at NYSID. Before coming to America, I had the impression that racism in America was ‘part of history’…I was very wrong about that.” One of Graham’s first internships was with the Black American designer Isabel Taylor Helton ’74, a NYSID alumna who graduated a decade before Graham. She recounts that when the statuesque Helton opened the door to greet her new intern, she looked out above Graham’s head, and then squinted down at her, and was “quite surprised” and pleased to greet another designer of color.

Graham first learned about American racism from friends and from self-education. She says, “I was told about discrimination when someone gave me a copy of the “Little Black Book.” I sought out films like Do the Right Thing, The Color Purple, and Malcolm X and started my limited journey to the history of Black America and how it was very different from my experience growing up in the West Indies. Slowly I was exposed to racism in America.”

Realizing the depth of America’s institutionalized racism was painful to Graham. So was the constant pressure to fit into a racial and ethnic box. “We are all part of one race— human,” She says, “I don’t subscribe to the binary views in the US around ‘race’ and ethnicity. I self-identify as a person of color. I am of Afro-Caribbean culture, of mixed ethnicity and have no intention of erasing my heritage for a label that does not describe me, nor my family.”

She was drawn from M Moser Associates to Perkins&Will in 2015. Part of what attracted her to the company was its proactive and progressive action on “giving back so others can move forward” and “our firmwide commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” For Graham, much of the work of creating a truly inclusive environment is freeing people to express their specific heritages and experiences, creating “a culture of healthy creative tension” in which no one feels like the minority in the room. Perhaps because of her father’s legacy, she’s passionate about bringing issues of physical challenges and neurodiversity into discussions about inclusiveness.

She says, “It took me a long time to speak up candidly and with conviction about my stance on equity. I often found that people were trying to convince me that equality was the only path. We are not equal; we are each individual and different. Equity is key.” The lessons her late father imparted have lived on in her.

TEACHING GREEN Hear Jennifer Graham at Teaching Green, NYSID’s symposium on sustainability in interior design education October 8–9, 2021 teachinggreen.nysid.edu

10 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 11

OPPOSITE PAGE: RENDERING BY ROGER LANDIVAR (PERKINS&WILL) FOR CURBED “THE COVID MEMORIAL PROJECT.” LEFT: THE OFFICES OF VIACOMCBS BY PERKINS&WILL. PHOTO: ERIC LAIGNEL. ABOVE: JENNIFER GRAHAM WITH COLLEAGUES AT AN LMNOP EVENT.

Despite the demands of her job, Graham has led her company’s Social Purpose Initiative (SRI) since 2016. The Perkins&Will SRI groups provide pro bono services for nonprofits for whom such services would be otherwise out of reach. They focus on projects that fulfill human needs, such as education, community facilities, affordable housing, or childcare. Graham also took on a co-leader role of the Perkins&Will NYO JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) Initiative this year. This group is creating best practices on how to bring justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion into the architecture and design process and sharing them with the industry. She is the vice president of action for the IIDA, a volunteer role in which she champions social purpose causes, coordinates designers’ community-based engagements with nonprofits, and provides education and programming about how to support increased cultural and ethnic diversity in the design profession. (This role came about when LMNOP NYC Inc., a professional development organization for the architecture and design community Graham founded in 2009, merged into the IIDA in 2020). One of the initiatives she started with LMNOP and will expand with IIDA is diverting furniture headed for landfill to nonprofit organizations. She’s also a member of NYSID’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commission. In this role, she hopes to be able to help NYSID attract more BIPOC faculty members. This is just the current equity and advocacy work she’s involved in!

Graham says, “What I want is a fair shot for everyone.”

She attributes her communal spirit to her upbringing in Barbados, a socially democratic country with socialized

medicine, strong schools, free education, and an adult literacy rate of 99.6 percent. “Barbados has a sharing culture.

If you have abundance, you share it with your neighbors,” she says. “For me, giving is cultural, and even more than that, it’s familial. Service is who we are in my family.”

Graham grew up the daughter of a Bajan doctor in a multicultural family that included her indigenous Peruvian grandmother. She says, “This little island is full of brown and black people who look like me. My family is black, brown, and white, and mixed. Barbados has its prejudices, but growing up in an environment where I was part of a majority helped me find my safe spaces when I moved to NYC. I had a happy childhood and was an avid bibliophile and an active equestrienne.” Dr. “Bertie” Graham, her father, was the first head of pediatrics at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the first developmental pediatrician on the island. He persuaded the government to fund preschool immunization for all children, leading to the elimination of diseases such as measles, diphtheria, and tetanus. Throughout his career, he championed deinstitutionalization and quality health care for the physically and developmentally challenged, supporting institutions that focused on health and welfare of disabled children in his country. The young Bertie Graham had been preparing to study architecture when his twin brother George, a medical student on his way to Cambridge, died of rheumatic fever. His grieving family wanted him to become a doctor, so Bertie gave up architecture and took up medicine. Perhaps that’s why when his daughter Jennifer expressed an interest in design after a family visit to New York City, he supported her every step of the way.

Graham’s pursuit of a career in interior design began when she entered NYSID’s BFA program in 1981. At NYSID, she says, “There were not many students who looked like me, but I felt totally accepted. I was initially shielded from overt discrimination at NYSID. Before coming to America, I had the impression that racism in America was ‘part of history’…I was very wrong about that.” One of Graham’s first internships was with the Black American designer Isabel Taylor Helton ’74, a NYSID alumna who graduated a decade before Graham. She recounts that when the statuesque Helton opened the door to greet her new intern, she looked out above Graham’s head, and then squinted down at her, and was “quite surprised” and pleased to greet another designer of color.

Graham first learned about American racism from friends and from self-education. She says, “I was told about discrimination when someone gave me a copy of the “Little Black Book.” I sought out films like Do the Right Thing, The Color Purple, and Malcolm X and started my limited journey to the history of Black America and how it was very different from my experience growing up in the West Indies. Slowly I was exposed to racism in America.”

Realizing the depth of America’s institutionalized racism was painful to Graham. So was the constant pressure to fit into a racial and ethnic box. “We are all part of one race— human,” She says, “I don’t subscribe to the binary views in the US around ‘race’ and ethnicity. I self-identify as a person of color. I am of Afro-Caribbean culture, of mixed ethnicity and have no intention of erasing my heritage for a label that does not describe me, nor my family.”

She was drawn from M Moser Associates to Perkins&Will in 2015. Part of what attracted her to the company was its proactive and progressive action on “giving back so others can move forward” and “our firmwide commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” For Graham, much of the work of creating a truly inclusive environment is freeing people to express their specific heritages and experiences, creating “a culture of healthy creative tension” in which no one feels like the minority in the room. Perhaps because of her father’s legacy, she’s passionate about bringing issues of physical challenges and neurodiversity into discussions about inclusiveness.

She says, “It took me a long time to speak up candidly and with conviction about my stance on equity. I often found that people were trying to convince me that equality was the only path. We are not equal; we are each individual and different. Equity is key.” The lessons her late father imparted have lived on in her.

TEACHING GREEN Hear Jennifer Graham at Teaching Green, NYSID’s symposium on sustainability in interior design education October 8–9, 2021 teachinggreen.nysid.edu

12 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

RUOXI CUI ’13 (MFA1) Interior Designer, WRNS Studio From China NYSID alumna Ruoxi Cui, NCIDQ, LEED ID+C, currently an interior designer at WRNS Studio in San Francisco, California, just finished working on one of the largest and most cutting-edge sustainable workplace designs in the United States, Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus, a 640,000 square feet project. One of the most interesting things about this project, she tells us, is that it will be designed such that 100% of the non-drinking water will come from rainfall or onsite-recycled water, addressing the drought conditions so prevalent in the state of California.

One would think that someone working on such an important project relatively early in her career would have been laser focused on becoming a designer her whole life, but this is not the case. Cui’s road to her calling, interior design, was meandering. She grew up in Wuhan, China, and studied English literature as an undergraduate. She came to the United States because she had always wanted to live in another culture and her husband was accepted

FEATURES

to an industrial design graduate program at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Through the resources at RISD, such as the library and lectures, she came to understand how much she loved design and architecture, and that her personal passion for interiors could become her career path.

She researched programs and settled on NYSID’s MFA1 program. “At the time, many schools would not accept people with no design background, but NYSID had a specific program for people with no formal design education,” she says. “The way the fundamentals were taught at NYSID worked. It wasn’t long before my classmates and I were competent with studio design projects.”

There was a lot that Cui loved about her NYSID education. “The instructors give you an opportunity to explore various concepts but also make you model the real world. The emphasis on sustainability and accessibility design helped me to transition from a student to a professional designer smoothly,” she says. “The small studio-based classes were great, and then there’s the benefit of Manhattan! We had access to professional networking events and we were close to design industry resources and showrooms.”

Cui was hired as an interior designer at the architecture firm Perkins&Will in 2013, and she worked there for five years. One of the things she appreciated about the firm is that they allowed her to work on different kinds of projects. She spent three years on an MIT graduate student residence tower and also worked on corporate offices.

She is a traveler and explorer of cultures at heart, so when she heard about a job working for clients at the sustainable architecture and planning firm WRNS studio in the Bay area, she seized on it. “I’ve always wanted to experience California life and culture,” she says, “and it was an opportunity to learn more about what I really care about: sustainable, human-centered design.” Since she began working at WRNS Studio in 2019, she’s been focused on one project, Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, which just opened. The design and planning was well underway when Cui came to work at WRNS. Her role in the project has been helping to manage the construction phase. She says, “I provide design and construction coordination, visit the job site weekly to keep track of the project’s progression, and answer questions that arise during construction, making sure the construction aligns with the design intent.

The building code and material resources are different on the West Coast, so this is a great learning experience.”

VEGETATED COURTYARDS ENCOURAGE OUTDOOR GATHERING AND COLLABORATION AT MICROSOFT’S SILICON VALLEY CAMPUS

BY WRNS STUDIO. PHOTO: WRNS STUDIO

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

The new Microsoft campus will be “a new kind of workspace and model for corporations that care about sustainability and human wellness,” says Cui. With sustainability and resiliency woven into every aspect of design, the project is targeting LEED Platinum, Net Zero Water per the Living Building Challenge, and Well Building

FALL 2021 | 13

Standard certification. Yet what Cui likes best about the massive project is its vision for a workplace in which the lives of workers integrate seamlessly with nature and the outdoors. Says Cui, “Looking back, I’m so grateful for my NYSID education that provided me with the necessary skills to participate in leading the discipline into the future.”

ABOVE AND LEFT: A LIVING ROOF AND SUN-FILLED RECEPTION AREAS CONNECT USERS TO NATURE AT MICROSOFT’S SILICON VALLEY CAMPUS BY WRNS STUDIO. PHOTO: WRNS STUDIO

12 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

RUOXI CUI ’13 (MFA1) Interior Designer, WRNS Studio From China NYSID alumna Ruoxi Cui, NCIDQ, LEED ID+C, currently an interior designer at WRNS Studio in San Francisco, California, just finished working on one of the largest and most cutting-edge sustainable workplace designs in the United States, Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus, a 640,000 square feet project. One of the most interesting things about this project, she tells us, is that it will be designed such that 100% of the non-drinking water will come from rainfall or onsite-recycled water, addressing the drought conditions so prevalent in the state of California.

One would think that someone working on such an important project relatively early in her career would have been laser focused on becoming a designer her whole life, but this is not the case. Cui’s road to her calling, interior design, was meandering. She grew up in Wuhan, China, and studied English literature as an undergraduate. She came to the United States because she had always wanted to live in another culture and her husband was accepted

FEATURES

to an industrial design graduate program at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Through the resources at RISD, such as the library and lectures, she came to understand how much she loved design and architecture, and that her personal passion for interiors could become her career path.

She researched programs and settled on NYSID’s MFA1 program. “At the time, many schools would not accept people with no design background, but NYSID had a specific program for people with no formal design education,” she says. “The way the fundamentals were taught at NYSID worked. It wasn’t long before my classmates and I were competent with studio design projects.”

There was a lot that Cui loved about her NYSID education. “The instructors give you an opportunity to explore various concepts but also make you model the real world. The emphasis on sustainability and accessibility design helped me to transition from a student to a professional designer smoothly,” she says. “The small studio-based classes were great, and then there’s the benefit of Manhattan! We had access to professional networking events and we were close to design industry resources and showrooms.”

Cui was hired as an interior designer at the architecture firm Perkins&Will in 2013, and she worked there for five years. One of the things she appreciated about the firm is that they allowed her to work on different kinds of projects. She spent three years on an MIT graduate student residence tower and also worked on corporate offices.

She is a traveler and explorer of cultures at heart, so when she heard about a job working for clients at the sustainable architecture and planning firm WRNS studio in the Bay area, she seized on it. “I’ve always wanted to experience California life and culture,” she says, “and it was an opportunity to learn more about what I really care about: sustainable, human-centered design.” Since she began working at WRNS Studio in 2019, she’s been focused on one project, Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, which just opened. The design and planning was well underway when Cui came to work at WRNS. Her role in the project has been helping to manage the construction phase. She says, “I provide design and construction coordination, visit the job site weekly to keep track of the project’s progression, and answer questions that arise during construction, making sure the construction aligns with the design intent.

The building code and material resources are different on the West Coast, so this is a great learning experience.”

VEGETATED COURTYARDS ENCOURAGE OUTDOOR GATHERING AND COLLABORATION AT MICROSOFT’S SILICON VALLEY CAMPUS

BY WRNS STUDIO. PHOTO: WRNS STUDIO

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

The new Microsoft campus will be “a new kind of workspace and model for corporations that care about sustainability and human wellness,” says Cui. With sustainability and resiliency woven into every aspect of design, the project is targeting LEED Platinum, Net Zero Water per the Living Building Challenge, and Well Building

FALL 2021 | 13

Standard certification. Yet what Cui likes best about the massive project is its vision for a workplace in which the lives of workers integrate seamlessly with nature and the outdoors. Says Cui, “Looking back, I’m so grateful for my NYSID education that provided me with the necessary skills to participate in leading the discipline into the future.”

ABOVE AND LEFT: A LIVING ROOF AND SUN-FILLED RECEPTION AREAS CONNECT USERS TO NATURE AT MICROSOFT’S SILICON VALLEY CAMPUS BY WRNS STUDIO. PHOTO: WRNS STUDIO

14 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

opportunity to learn about different cultures and different points of view. So many of us had fresh eyes on America.

There was something uniting and energizing about this.”

Pulyaev was in his second year at NYSID when he met Jeremy Hawkins, who would become his husband.

Hawkins and Pulyaev married in 2017. The legal right to marry the person he loved was something Pulyaev could never have had if he stayed in Russia. He says, “I fell in love with New York, then I fell in love in New York. Obviously, I’m staying!”

While at NYSID, Pulyaev entered the College’s alumni mentorship program and was paired with alumnus Lawrence Chabra ’09 (BFA), interiors studio director at RAMSA (Robert A.M. Stern Architects). “I was looking for an internship and I asked Lawrence about it,” he recalls. “I interned for RAMSA my first summer and then they asked me if I wanted to stay for my second summer. They offered me a full-time position before I graduated. I got a job right out of school, which is so important for international students.” Pulyaev values the time he spent at RAMSA as an interior designer, where he says, “I learned so much about the decorative aspects of interior design by working in depth on finish palettes and furniture selections. It is something that you often don’t have much time to focus on in school, but it’s absolutely essential to the interior design profession, especially now that bringing a hospitality feel into so many space types is the trend.” The first project he worked on at RAMSA was a residence in Germany for a Russian client, for which he bridged the cultural and linguistic gap between the design team and the client.

ILYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2) Interior Project Designer / Associate, Perkins&Will / NYSID Instructor From Russia Ilya Pulyaev never expected to find himself living and working in New York City. As a boy growing up in the city of Voronezh, Russia, Pulyaev dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. His mother worked as an interior designer and recognized that her son had a knack for the visual, but she was practical and told her son, “You are here in Voronezh, 300 miles from Moscow, so forget about it. Find something you can do here.” So Pulyaev studied architecture at a university in Voronezh and loved it, but the glamour of Moscow still called, so in his third year he transferred to Moscow Architectural Institute. He graduated and worked in interior architecture for four years in Moscow. Then, by chance, he made a fateful visit to New York City. He says, “The freedom, the diversity, the design! I was gobsmacked. I fell in love with New York City.”

He resolved to get himself to New York. He says, “Of the schools that I researched, I liked NYSID the most because the course of study was practical and real-world oriented.” He entered the The Post-Professional Master of Fine Arts in Interior Design (MFA2), a program geared towards students who have an undergraduate degree in architecture, design, or a related field.

Though he was attracted to NYSID because of the practicality of the curriculum, it was the freedom to design without budgets or client constraints that Pulyaev valued as an MFA2 student. He says, “It was so refreshing to build on what I already knew and push myself creatively without budgets to hold me back. It helped me develop a sense of possibility as a designer.” Pulyaev’s class consisted primarily of international students. He says, “I had classmates from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Haiti. Exposure to all these cultures was a great

“ The freedom, the diversity, the design!

I was gobsmacked. I fell in love with New York City.”

—ILYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2)

Pulyaev is currently interior project designer / associate at Perkins&Will. He actually met the principal who would eventually recruit him to the company, Carolyn BaRoss, at a NYSID “speed dating-style” portfolio review event while he was still in school at NYSID. She was impressed with his portfolio and gave him her card, but it wasn’t until a year and a half later when the perfect position opened at Perkins&Will New York Studio. Since his coworking space thesis project at NYSID, Pulyaev has been interested in exploring workplace design further, and this was an opportunity to do that.

14 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

ILYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2) Interior Project Designer / Associate, Perkins&Will / NYSID Instructor From Russia IIya Pulyaev never expected to find himself living and working in New York City. As a boy growing up in the city of Voronezh, Russia, Pulyaev dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. His mother worked as an interior designer and recognized that her son had a knack for the visual, but she was practical and told her son, “You are here in Voronezh, 300 miles from Moscow, so forget about it. Find something you can do here.” So Pulyaev studied architecture at a university in Voronezh and loved it, but the glamour of Moscow still called, so in his third year he transferred to Moscow Architectural Institute. He graduated and worked in interior architecture for four years in Moscow. Then, by chance, he made a fateful visit to New York City. He says, “The freedom, the diversity, the design! I was gobsmacked. I fell in love with New York City.”

He resolved to get himself to New York. He says, “Of the schools that I researched, I liked NYSID the most because the course of study was practical and real-world oriented.” He entered the The Post-Professional Master of Fine Arts in Interior Design (MFA2), a program geared towards students who have an undergraduate degree in architecture, design, or a related field.

Though he was attracted to NYSID because of the practicality of the curriculum, it was the freedom to design without budgets or client constraints that Pulyaev valued as an MFA2 student. He says, “It was so refreshing to build on what I already knew and push myself creatively without budgets to hold me back. It helped me develop a sense of possibility as a designer.” Pulyaev’s class consisted primarily of international students. He says, “I had classmates from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Haiti. Exposure to all these cultures was a great

FEATURES

opportunity to learn about different cultures and different points of view. So many of us had fresh eyes on America.

There was something uniting and energizing about this.”

Pulyaev was in his second year at NYSID when he met Jeremy Hawkins, who would become his husband.

Hawkins and Pulyaev married in 2017. The legal right to marry the person he loved was something Pulyaev could never have had if he stayed in Russia. He says, “I fell in love with New York, then I fell in love in New York. Obviously, I’m staying!”

While at NYSID, Pulyaev entered the College’s alumni mentorship program and was paired with alumnus Lawrence Chabra ’09 (BFA), interiors studio director at RAMSA (Robert A.M. Stern Architects). “I was looking for an internship and I asked Lawrence about it,” he recalls. “I interned for RAMSA my first summer and then they asked me if I wanted to stay for my second summer. They offered me a full-time position before I graduated. I got a job right out of school, which is so important for international students.” Pulyaev values the time he spent at RAMSA as an interior designer, where he says, “I learned so much about the decorative aspects of interior design by working in depth on finish palettes and furniture selections. It is something that you often don’t have much time to focus on in school, but it’s absolutely essential to the interior design profession, especially now that bringing a hospitality feel into so many space types is the trend.” The first project he worked on at RAMSA was a residence in Germany for a Russian client, for which he bridged the cultural and linguistic gap between the design team and the client.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

In his two-plus years at Perkins&Will, Pulyaev has been working on a financial firm project, seven floors of a building in midtown New York City. (He’s not permitted to discuss details until it’s built.) He says, “Working on a huge project like this from the programming phase all the way to construction administration really helped me grow as a designer.” Pulyaev notes that one of the reasons he loves working at Perkins&Will is the fact that the firm is “phenomenally diverse.” He says, “Diversity, of thought, of identity, of culture, is a priority for the organization. I’m lucky to work very closely with (NYSID alumna) Jennifer Graham ’85 (BFA), who is a leader in bringing more diverse representation into our industry. I value that in my workplace.”

Once a NYSID student, Pulyaev is now the teacher. He taught Design & Drawing I to NYSID MFA1 students last fall and hopes to do it again. He says, “As I was teaching the technical stuff, I tried to imbue it with my real world experience by putting all the rules my students learn into that context. That’s what made it fun for me and, hopefully, for the students.”

“ The freedom, the diversity, the design!

I was gobsmacked. I fell in love with New York City.”

—IIYA PULYAEV ’17 (MFA2) Pulyaev is currently interior project designer / associate at Perkins&Will. He actually met the principal who would eventually recruit him to the company, Carolyn BaRoss, at a NYSID “speed dating-style” portfolio review event while he was still in school at NYSID. She was impressed with his portfolio and gave him her card, but it wasn’t until a year and a half later when the perfect position opened at Perkins&Will New York Studio. Since his coworking space thesis project at NYSID, Pulyaev has been interested in exploring workplace design further, and this was an opportunity to do that.

TOP RIGHT: WHAT GOES INTO A PRESENTATION AT RAMSA. PHOTO: RAMSA. ABOVE AND RIGHT: PULYAEV’S PAPER MOCK UP INSPIRED THIS CUSTOM MILLWORK PANELING FOR PERKINS&WILL. PHOTO: PERKINS&WILL

FALL 2021 | 15

16 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

MYOUNG JOO CHUN ’02 (MFA2) Director of Graduate Interior Architecture, Endicott College / Owner, The Space Design From Korea Myoung Joo Chun’s habit, when she was an undergraduate student pursuing a history degree at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea, was to roam museums and galleries. She loved art and art history, yet she found, in galleries, that she paid more attention to the envelope of the room than to the art, to “the light and shadow, to the way the architecture served the art and brought the light in.”

It was on one of these gallery excursions that a revelation hit her: she wanted to explore the design of the built environment. So, she added a second major, environmental design, and graduated with a dual degree. She then worked for an architecture firm for two years in Seoul, but she soon found herself yearning to get out of her comfort zone.

For Chun, the process of design always starts as a deep exploration of the way people live. She says, “I wanted to go to New York City and experience that complex and multilayered culture filled with diverse humans. I wanted to be immersed in unfamiliarity because I felt it would help me grow.” She researched programs and settled on NYSID’s MFA2. “The singular focus of NYSID was attractive to me,” she says.

As she studied at NYSID, she found that, “The whole New York City itself was the classroom to me. We learned about the neoclassical design revival and these great examples from different eras were right outside my window. We got to see it in the streets. Also, my instructors took us to Gensler and Perkins&Will to meet designers who showed us their offices and projects.” She’s especially grateful to her design history instructor Matthew Postal for showing her the city through field trips, her first studio instructor Donna Goodman who encouraged her to overcome her nervousness about her language skills, and her thesis advisor, longtime NYSID Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal, who influenced her in school and beyond.

FEATURES

There were fringe benefits to Chun’s exploration of New York City life: she met the man who would become her husband while out to dinner one night. They married right after graduation from NYSID, and she moved with her husband to the Greater Boston area in 2003.

An award-winning student, Chun was hired by CannonDesign in 2003. She spent more than a year and a half at the firm, and then was recruited by Perkins&Will, Boston, in 2004. One of the projects she enjoyed working on the most was the Department of Music at Tufts University.

She collaborated extensively with acoustic engineers, architects, and urban designers on the project, and worked with the construction administration team to guide the project from the ground up to furniture installation. While at Perkins&Will, Chun teamed up with an architect and won the Perkins&Will Excellence in Design Competition, held annually to promote interdisciplinary design.

Chun enjoyed design construction details, and she often threw herself into long hours. After five years with the firm, she found herself needing “a pause.” She took a leave of absence, had a baby, and stayed home with her son for the first years of his life. She used this period to consider “a new format for life,” and then she applied for a teaching position at Endicott College. Her parents were in academia, so this path felt natural. She was surprised when instead of being offered just an instructor position, she was also offered the job of director of graduate interior architecture at Endicott College.

Chun took to academic life. She says, “The teaching is really rewarding, but what surprised me is that higher education administration is too.” As much as she loves her academic job, Chun felt like a piece of her was missing when she was not designing. So, she continued her practice with a design firm called The Space Design that she started when she took her “pause.” She does no marketing, but she keeps getting referrals from past jobs. She says, “My practice and my teaching are informing each other. I get reinspired when I teach: the students connect me to the ‘why’ of design.”

It’s easy to see this invigoration in Chun’s designs for her company, The Space Design. She takes an academic approach to the history of a home and how it was used over the years before she creates a plan for it. Since she works in New England, there’s a lot of history in every structure she updates. This is especially true of a Tudor style house, built in 1936 in Brookline, Chun began working on in 2017. She says, “This project made me study more about American architecture and how the American family has changed with time. In the early 1900s, the kitchen was tucked away, never the center of the house, because it was the maid’s place, and her quarters tended to be nearby. Later

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

on, domestic chores were outsourced, family structure became simpler, and the kitchen became the center of the American house, where the family came together.” Her task for the Brookline Tudor was to reinvent the space and layout for a modern American family. The family’s teenage daughter wanted seclusion, but the family wanted to be able to check in, so Chun transformed the former maid’s quarters into rooms for the teenager. She opened up the architecture of the kitchen so that the back door goes right from the driveway into a transitional mudroom that opens into the kitchen, “making the kitchen the center of living,” she explains. Instead of working against the traditional darkness of a Tudor, she celebrated it, using details like dark reclaimed wood for the kitchen floor.

Her task was exactly the opposite for a three-story historical building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she

ABOVE: CHUN REIMAGINED A BROOKLINE TUDOR FOR MODERN LIFE, MAKING THE KITCHEN CENTRAL. RIGHT: CHUN USED FLOATING STAIRS TO OPEN VIEWS TO THE YARD IN THIS CAMBRIDGE COLONIAL. PHOTO: THE SPACE DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 17

began work on in 2013. The neighborhood was Colonial, but the clients wanted a “shockingly modern,” open plan design for the interior of the structure, which had been very compartmentalized in its original form. Floating stairs opened up sightlines to the magnificent yard and brought the light deeply into the basement. Both the son and the daughter of her clients were hockey players, so she created a hockey rink on the bottom floor of the building in which the floating stairs could double as arena seating.

Chun is currently at work on a multiyear restoration of a home in Weston, Massachusetts. As the mother of a teen, professor, higher education administrator, and practicing architectural designer, it’s possible Chun has never been busier. But she’s also never felt more fulfilled.

She says, “I feel satisfaction from my orchestrated days with different roles.” ·

16 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

MYOUNG JOO CHUN ’02 (MFA2) Director of Graduate Interior Architecture, Endicott College / Owner, The Space Design From Korea Myoung Joo Chun’s habit, when she was an undergraduate student pursuing a history degree at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea, was to roam museums and galleries. She loved art and art history, yet she found, in galleries, that she paid more attention to the envelope of the room than to the art, to “the light and shadow, to the way the architecture served the art and brought the light in.”

It was on one of these gallery excursions that a revelation hit her: she wanted to explore the design of the built environment. So, she added a second major, environmental design, and graduated with a dual degree. She then worked for an architecture firm for two years in Seoul, but she soon found herself yearning to get out of her comfort zone.

For Chun, the process of design always starts as a deep exploration of the way people live. She says, “I wanted to go to New York City and experience that complex and multilayered culture filled with diverse humans. I wanted to be immersed in unfamiliarity because I felt it would help me grow.” She researched programs and settled on NYSID’s MFA2. “The singular focus of NYSID was attractive to me,” she says.

As she studied at NYSID, she found that, “The whole New York City itself was the classroom to me. We learned about the neoclassical design revival and these great examples from different eras were right outside my window. We got to see it in the streets. Also, my instructors took us to Gensler and Perkins&Will to meet designers who showed us their offices and projects.” She’s especially grateful to her design history instructor Matthew Postal for showing her the city through field trips, her first studio instructor Donna Goodman who encouraged her to overcome her nervousness about her language skills, and her thesis advisor, longtime NYSID Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal, who influenced her in school and beyond.

FEATURES

There were fringe benefits to Chun’s exploration of New York City life: she met the man who would become her husband while out to dinner one night. They married right after graduation from NYSID, and she moved with her husband to the Greater Boston area in 2003.

An award-winning student, Chun was hired by CannonDesign in 2003. She spent more than a year and a half at the firm, and then was recruited by Perkins&Will, Boston, in 2004. One of the projects she enjoyed working on the most was the Department of Music at Tufts University.

She collaborated extensively with acoustic engineers, architects, and urban designers on the project, and worked with the construction administration team to guide the project from the ground up to furniture installation. While at Perkins&Will, Chun teamed up with an architect and won the Perkins&Will Excellence in Design Competition, held annually to promote interdisciplinary design.

Chun enjoyed design construction details, and she often threw herself into long hours. After five years with the firm, she found herself needing “a pause.” She took a leave of absence, had a baby, and stayed home with her son for the first years of his life. She used this period to consider “a new format for life,” and then she applied for a teaching position at Endicott College. Her parents were in academia, so this path felt natural. She was surprised when instead of being offered just an instructor position, she was also offered the job of director of graduate interior architecture at Endicott College.

Chun took to academic life. She says, “The teaching is really rewarding, but what surprised me is that higher education administration is too.” As much as she loves her academic job, Chun felt like a piece of her was missing when she was not designing. So, she continued her practice with a design firm called The Space Design that she started when she took her “pause.” She does no marketing, but she keeps getting referrals from past jobs. She says, “My practice and my teaching are informing each other. I get reinspired when I teach: the students connect me to the ‘why’ of design.”

It’s easy to see this invigoration in Chun’s designs for her company, The Space Design. She takes an academic approach to the history of a home and how it was used over the years before she creates a plan for it. Since she works in New England, there’s a lot of history in every structure she updates. This is especially true of a Tudor style house, built in 1936 in Brookline, Chun began working on in 2017. She says, “This project made me study more about American architecture and how the American family has changed with time. In the early 1900s, the kitchen was tucked away, never the center of the house, because it was the maid’s place, and her quarters tended to be nearby. Later

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

on, domestic chores were outsourced, family structure became simpler, and the kitchen became the center of the American house, where the family came together.” Her task for the Brookline Tudor was to reinvent the space and layout for a modern American family. The family’s teenage daughter wanted seclusion, but the family wanted to be able to check in, so Chun transformed the former maid’s quarters into rooms for the teenager. She opened up the architecture of the kitchen so that the back door goes right from the driveway into a transitional mudroom that opens into the kitchen, “making the kitchen the center of living,” she explains. Instead of working against the traditional darkness of a Tudor, she celebrated it, using details like dark reclaimed wood for the kitchen floor.

Her task was exactly the opposite for a three-story historical building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that she

ABOVE: CHUN REIMAGINED A BROOKLINE TUDOR FOR MODERN LIFE, MAKING THE KITCHEN CENTRAL. RIGHT: CHUN USED FLOATING STAIRS TO OPEN VIEWS TO THE YARD IN THIS CAMBRIDGE COLONIAL. PHOTO: THE SPACE DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 17

began work on in 2013. The neighborhood was Colonial, but the clients wanted a “shockingly modern,” open plan design for the interior of the structure, which had been very compartmentalized in its original form. Floating stairs opened up sightlines to the magnificent yard and brought the light deeply into the basement. Both the son and the daughter of her clients were hockey players, so she created a hockey rink on the bottom floor of the building in which the floating stairs could double as arena seating.

Chun is currently at work on a multiyear restoration of a home in Weston, Massachusetts. As the mother of a teen, professor, higher education administrator, and practicing architectural designer, it’s possible Chun has never been busier. But she’s also never felt more fulfilled.

She says, “I feel satisfaction from my orchestrated days with different roles.” ·

18 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Mission Behind Every Design Christelle Muhimpundu ’18 (MFA1) Designs for MASS Design Group in Rwanda

T

his citizen of Burundi once dreamed of studying in the US; now a graduate of NYSID, she’s brought her international design experience back to Africa, to the exciting, emerging market of Rwanda.

As an associate at MASS Design Group, Muhimpundu is helping local artisans develop skills and livelihoods as she sources for interiors.

Design should improve the lives of its users. MASS Design Group, the international, nonprofit architecture and design firm that employs Christelle Muhimpundu ’18 (MFA1), has taken this maxim to the next level. MASS approaches every building as an opportunity to promote justice, economic opportunity, and human dignity.

Muhimpundu works in the MASS office in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali City. As an interior design associate for the FF&E (furniture, fixtures, and equipment) team, she’s tasked with sourcing high-quality materials and furnishings from local artisans and craftspeople, and in turn, developing the economic infrastructure and

knowledge base of the communities in which she works.

MASS researches a community’s needs and calculates how to have the greatest impact before embarking on a project. “At MASS, we view not only the client, but also the community, as our partner. A good example is the Butaro District Hospital,” Muhimpundu says of the stateof-the-art medical facility that opened in an impoverished district of the country in 2011. “You can see MASS’ impact in the lives of the women who learned how to be masons and later started their own businesses, or in the young men who learned how to build a wall out of volcanic stone and went on to become masters of the craft.” This Butaro hospital is now well-known by architects for its gorgeous stone walls of volcanic rock, a natural asset Rwandan farmers used to regard as a nuisance. Now, they view it as a valuable building material.

HER PATH TO NYSID Muhimpundu grew up in Burundi. When the opportunity to come to the United States for her higher education arose, she took it. She was not sure about what she wanted to study. She got a bachelor’s degree in business and management from Drexel University in Philadelphia, but what she enjoyed most were the undergraduate courses she took in architecture. She worked in hospitality management, for Marriott, for several years, before she decided that if she was going to get a master’s degree, she was going to do it in something she loves—interior design.

She found NYSID and decided to go for the MFA after conversations with some second-year MFA1 students. She says, “I loved the intimacy of the program and also the

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

environment of the Graduate Center. For someone like me who was already working, it didn’t feel like I was going back to school but rather embarking on a new career in a context that felt professional.”

At NYSID, she valued the cultural and professional diversity of her MFA1 cohort. She says, “We had bankers, doctors, stay-at-home moms, all kinds of people. Students were from Malaysia, China…Maryland, Iowa. Coming from different backgrounds, we all designed differently and that was very beautiful and inspiring for each one of us.”

CHOOSING TO WORK IN RWANDA NYSID’s MFA1 requires students to do experiential learning over the summers, so Muhimpundu happened to be looking for an internship when she went to Rwanda for a holiday. Most Americans know of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, but fewer know of the country’s comparatively successful truth and reconciliation process and rebuilding in its aftermath. Says Muhimpundu, “Rwanda’s economy is growing. There is so much opportunity, and the design sector is growing too. The government has invested in traditional craftsmanship, like weaving and pottery, so these arts won’t be lost…I realized after that holiday that I could live in Rwanda and be very happy.” She landed an internship at MASS in Kigali over the summer of 2017 and was hired full time upon her graduation in 2018. When she started, the interior design department of MASS was new, so Muhimpundu had a chance to develop along with it.

Muhimpundu’s job is focused on craftspeople, rather than just the products they create. Everything she sources for MASS must be local. Part of her job is to train the weavers, the potters, the carvers, and other makers to expand beyond their traditions, to incorporate creativity and originality, and to collaborate with other artisans.

She says, “Design is embedded in the culture, but the need to diversify and expand on traditional craftsmanship is there. We commission, for example, a fixture that involves weaving, woodwork, ceramics, and metalwork, and in doing so we teach artisans to collaborate with other makers to create high-quality products.”

A PROJECT THAT COULD CHANGE RWANDA’S FUTURE Muhimpundu and her team are hard at work on an enormous project: the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture. The vision for the Institute is to create food security for Rwanda, a country whose young population is expected to double in the next 30 years. This huge university and research institution will encompass classrooms, student residences, faculty residences, farms,

FALL 2021 | 19

administrative offices, barn storage, food production facilities, and public spaces of many kinds.

For Muhimpundu, it’s a challenge and a chance to work on almost every kind of space. Her mandate is that everything she sources for this project be produced locally and sustainably. The research and planning phase of the project was long, and now, in Phase 2, her FF&E team is meeting with more than 80 craftspeople to create beautiful, custom pieces that incorporate wood, weaving, ceramics, and metal smithing. For the interiors, Muhimpundu and her colleagues on the FF&E team designed custom lounge chairs and sofas made of wood frames and woven metal back frames. Different weaving techniques are used on the back of the chairs: traditional banana, palm, or papyrus weaving. The products are beautiful, durable, and sustainable, but it’s the people who make her job fulfilling.

“We’re not only creating employment,” she says. “We’re exposing local people to the idea that they can be worldclass artisans. This is a very good job.” ·

LIVING ROOM FURNISHED WITH LOCALLY MADE FURNITURE, CARPETS, AND LIGHTING BY THE MASS FF&E TEAM. PHOTO: MASS GROUP

18 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Mission Behind Every Design Christelle Muhimpundu ’18 (MFA1) Designs for MASS Design Group in Rwanda

T

his citizen of Burundi once dreamed of studying in the US; now a graduate of NYSID, she’s brought her international design experience back to Africa, to the exciting, emerging market of Rwanda.

As an associate at MASS Design Group, Muhimpundu is helping local artisans develop skills and livelihoods as she sources for interiors.

Design should improve the lives of its users. MASS Design Group, the international, nonprofit architecture and design firm that employs Christelle Muhimpundu ’18 (MFA1), has taken this maxim to the next level. MASS approaches every building as an opportunity to promote justice, economic opportunity, and human dignity.

Muhimpundu works in the MASS office in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali City. As an interior design associate for the FF&E (furniture, fixtures, and equipment) team, she’s tasked with sourcing high-quality materials and furnishings from local artisans and craftspeople, and in turn, developing the economic infrastructure and

knowledge base of the communities in which she works.

MASS researches a community’s needs and calculates how to have the greatest impact before embarking on a project. “At MASS, we view not only the client, but also the community, as our partner. A good example is the Butaro District Hospital,” Muhimpundu says of the stateof-the-art medical facility that opened in an impoverished district of the country in 2011. “You can see MASS’ impact in the lives of the women who learned how to be masons and later started their own businesses, or in the young men who learned how to build a wall out of volcanic stone and went on to become masters of the craft.” This Butaro hospital is now well-known by architects for its gorgeous stone walls of volcanic rock, a natural asset Rwandan farmers used to regard as a nuisance. Now, they view it as a valuable building material.

HER PATH TO NYSID Muhimpundu grew up in Burundi. When the opportunity to come to the United States for her higher education arose, she took it. She was not sure about what she wanted to study. She got a bachelor’s degree in business and management from Drexel University in Philadelphia, but what she enjoyed most were the undergraduate courses she took in architecture. She worked in hospitality management, for Marriott, for several years, before she decided that if she was going to get a master’s degree, she was going to do it in something she loves—interior design.

She found NYSID and decided to go for the MFA after conversations with some second-year MFA1 students. She says, “I loved the intimacy of the program and also the

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

environment of the Graduate Center. For someone like me who was already working, it didn’t feel like I was going back to school but rather embarking on a new career in a context that felt professional.”

At NYSID, she valued the cultural and professional diversity of her MFA1 cohort. She says, “We had bankers, doctors, stay-at-home moms, all kinds of people. Students were from Malaysia, China…Maryland, Iowa. Coming from different backgrounds, we all designed differently and that was very beautiful and inspiring for each one of us.”

CHOOSING TO WORK IN RWANDA NYSID’s MFA1 requires students to do experiential learning over the summers, so Muhimpundu happened to be looking for an internship when she went to Rwanda for a holiday. Most Americans know of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, but fewer know of the country’s comparatively successful truth and reconciliation process and rebuilding in its aftermath. Says Muhimpundu, “Rwanda’s economy is growing. There is so much opportunity, and the design sector is growing too. The government has invested in traditional craftsmanship, like weaving and pottery, so these arts won’t be lost…I realized after that holiday that I could live in Rwanda and be very happy.” She landed an internship at MASS in Kigali over the summer of 2017 and was hired full time upon her graduation in 2018. When she started, the interior design department of MASS was new, so Muhimpundu had a chance to develop along with it.

Muhimpundu’s job is focused on craftspeople, rather than just the products they create. Everything she sources for MASS must be local. Part of her job is to train the weavers, the potters, the carvers, and other makers to expand beyond their traditions, to incorporate creativity and originality, and to collaborate with other artisans.

She says, “Design is embedded in the culture, but the need to diversify and expand on traditional craftsmanship is there. We commission, for example, a fixture that involves weaving, woodwork, ceramics, and metalwork, and in doing so we teach artisans to collaborate with other makers to create high-quality products.”

A PROJECT THAT COULD CHANGE RWANDA’S FUTURE Muhimpundu and her team are hard at work on an enormous project: the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture. The vision for the Institute is to create food security for Rwanda, a country whose young population is expected to double in the next 30 years. This huge university and research institution will encompass classrooms, student residences, faculty residences, farms,

FALL 2021 | 19

administrative offices, barn storage, food production facilities, and public spaces of many kinds.

For Muhimpundu, it’s a challenge and a chance to work on almost every kind of space. Her mandate is that everything she sources for this project be produced locally and sustainably. The research and planning phase of the project was long, and now, in Phase 2, her FF&E team is meeting with more than 80 craftspeople to create beautiful, custom pieces that incorporate wood, weaving, ceramics, and metal smithing. For the interiors, Muhimpundu and her colleagues on the FF&E team designed custom lounge chairs and sofas made of wood frames and woven metal back frames. Different weaving techniques are used on the back of the chairs: traditional banana, palm, or papyrus weaving. The products are beautiful, durable, and sustainable, but it’s the people who make her job fulfilling.

“We’re not only creating employment,” she says. “We’re exposing local people to the idea that they can be worldclass artisans. This is a very good job.” ·

LIVING ROOM FURNISHED WITH LOCALLY MADE FURNITURE, CARPETS, AND LIGHTING BY THE MASS FF&E TEAM. PHOTO: MASS GROUP

20 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Color Story Strong Color Sense Comes from Experience

T

he way NYSID teaches color for interiors is both traditional and innovative.

Fine artist and NYSID instructor William Engel ’02 (AAS), and retired NYSID professor Ethel Rompilla ’84 (BFA), formative influences on how color is taught at NYSID, discuss what goes into having an educated “eye” for color. Alumna Andrea LaConte-Magno ’02 (AAS), director of color marketing and development at Benjamin Moore, sheds light on her exciting career in color.

Many people believe they are born with a great sense of color. The faculty at NYSID who teach Color 141 (Color for Interiors) and Color 339 (Advanced Color) believe that selecting colors for interiors is also about experience.

FIRST, UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF COLOR At NYSID, Color 141 is offered as an on-site course, as well as an online course that can be taken synchronously in real-time (DR) or asynchronously (DL). Several different faculty members teach Color 141. The DL courses draw on videos of retired NYSID instructor Ethel Rompilla an octogenarian who literally wrote the book on color, a seminal work called Color for Interiors. She stars in these videos with NYSID alumni and instructor Stefan Steil ’08 (BFA) / ’10 (MFA2), principal of Steilish Interiors & Architecture and a designer known for the evocative color stories in his interiors.

“Most people don’t realize that color has many dimensions,” says Rompilla. “It’s incredibly complex, and this is the way we have always taught it at NYSID. You must understand whether a color is light, dark, neutral, or saturated, and its undertones of other colors. The only way to understand color is to mix hundreds of paints, so you can understand, for example, how to neutralize it if it’s too saturated, or what happens if you add blue.”

Students in every NYSID Color 141 course mix gouache paints by hand, but first they are introduced to the history of color and color theory, most importantly the Munsell Color system, which Albert Munsell created in the early 20th century and based on three properties: hue (basic color), chroma (color intensity), and value (degree of lightness or darkness). Beyond that, says Rompilla, “You have to understand the effect of light on color, the psychology of color, what colors mean to different cultures, and the interaction of colors in close proximity to one another. You can take a color, surround it with a different color, and it will look very different. This is what the Impressionists did, especially (Georges-Pierre) Seurat. The eye mixes colors that are near each other (a phenomenon known as optical blending).”

Though retired, Rompilla, an iconic color expert, NYSID alumna, and beloved member of the NYSID community, is able to pass on her expertise to a new generation of NYSID students through the medium of online learning.

THIS PAGE: WILLIAM ENGEL WITH ADVANCED COLOR STUDENTS. OPPOSITE PAGE: INSPIRED BY WILLIAM ENGEL’S MURALS, IN SITU DESIGN MADE THE WILLIAM HOTEL AN EXPLORATION OF COLOR.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 21

20 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Color Story Strong Color Sense Comes from Experience

T

he way NYSID teaches color for interiors is both traditional and innovative.

Fine artist and NYSID instructor William Engel ’02 (AAS), and retired NYSID professor Ethel Rompilla ’84 (BFA), formative influences on how color is taught at NYSID, discuss what goes into having an educated “eye” for color. Alumna Andrea LaConte-Magno ’02 (AAS), director of color marketing and development at Benjamin Moore, sheds light on her exciting career in color.

Many people believe they are born with a great sense of color. The faculty at NYSID who teach Color 141 (Color for Interiors) and Color 339 (Advanced Color) believe that selecting colors for interiors is also about experience.

FIRST, UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF COLOR At NYSID, Color 141 is offered as an on-site course, as well as an online course that can be taken synchronously in real-time (DR) or asynchronously (DL). Several different faculty members teach Color 141. The DL courses draw on videos of retired NYSID instructor Ethel Rompilla an octogenarian who literally wrote the book on color, a seminal work called Color for Interiors. She stars in these videos with NYSID alumni and instructor Stefan Steil ’08 (BFA) / ’10 (MFA2), principal of Steilish Interiors & Architecture and a designer known for the evocative color stories in his interiors.

“Most people don’t realize that color has many dimensions,” says Rompilla. “It’s incredibly complex, and this is the way we have always taught it at NYSID. You must understand whether a color is light, dark, neutral, or saturated, and its undertones of other colors. The only way to understand color is to mix hundreds of paints, so you can understand, for example, how to neutralize it if it’s too saturated, or what happens if you add blue.”

Students in every NYSID Color 141 course mix gouache paints by hand, but first they are introduced to the history of color and color theory, most importantly the Munsell Color system, which Albert Munsell created in the early 20th century and based on three properties: hue (basic color), chroma (color intensity), and value (degree of lightness or darkness). Beyond that, says Rompilla, “You have to understand the effect of light on color, the psychology of color, what colors mean to different cultures, and the interaction of colors in close proximity to one another. You can take a color, surround it with a different color, and it will look very different. This is what the Impressionists did, especially (Georges-Pierre) Seurat. The eye mixes colors that are near each other (a phenomenon known as optical blending).”

Though retired, Rompilla, an iconic color expert, NYSID alumna, and beloved member of the NYSID community, is able to pass on her expertise to a new generation of NYSID students through the medium of online learning.

THIS PAGE: WILLIAM ENGEL WITH ADVANCED COLOR STUDENTS. OPPOSITE PAGE: INSPIRED BY WILLIAM ENGEL’S MURALS, IN SITU DESIGN MADE THE WILLIAM HOTEL AN EXPLORATION OF COLOR.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 21

22 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

on their aprons and paint triptychs. He also believes that in today’s increasingly digital world, students have to be able to communicate the specifics of a color digitally. Early in the course he asks students to take a color they love from Benjamin Moore, print it on the computer, match it in Photoshop, and tweak the color until they can be sure the color they show their client in a presentation matches what will go in the space. “Understanding the difference between what we see on the computer and the actual color in three-dimensional space is crucial, he says. “This has to be part of color education now.”

ABOVE: WILLIAM ENGEL IN FRONT OF ONE OF HIS PAINTINGS. RIGHT: ANDREA LACONTE-MAGNO, DIRECTOR OF COLOR MARKETING, AND DEVELOPMENT AT BENJAMIN MOORE.

NEXT, USE COLOR AS THE DRIVER OF DESIGN Alumnus William Engel is a painter who works closely with interior designers and architects to create artwork that helps tell the story of a space, or a whole building, through color. He maintains painting studios in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC and in San Diego, California. He’s also a legendary NYSID instructor who has been teaching color for 16 years at the school (and other courses for longer). After years of teaching Color 141, he worked with NYSID’s Office of Academic Affairs to develop NYSID’s Advanced Color course (for graduates and undergraduates), also known as Color 339.

Engel says, “The difference in the Advanced Color course is that we are working with color as a driver of the design project rather than an application.” Engel got the idea for the course when he was collaborating with Edwin Zawadzki, the cofounder of In Situ Design, and Lilian Bakhash, the owner of Lilian B Interiors (both NYSID faculty members) on the William Hotel in Manhattan.

Engel and Zawadzki pitched the hotel developer the concept of a hotel that evoked the impression of “poured color, with every floor representing a different hue.” The design treated the entire interior of this twin Victorian townhouse as a canvas for color.

The assignments in Advanced Color challenge students to derive a design concept from color. For example, Engel challenges students to analyze a movie in regards to how the director uses color to advance the form and narrative of the film. He then challenges the students to apply the color story of a specific film to a space with an entrance hallway, boxy space, transitional hallway, and open living space, so that students begin to understand how color moves people through space and emotion. Engel allows the students to select any film, from North by Northwest to Cinderella. Says Engel, “They have to use the film’s color story to create movement and moments within this space.

What comes out of this assignment is fascinating. They get so into it.”

For the culmination of Advanced Color, students have to analyze one painting, or the body of work, from an artist they admire. They then have to break down the color scheme of the painting into a palette and apply it to a SketchUp or PowerPoint presentation of a small apartment for a client. The students have to be able to communicate about their color choices and how they relate to the artwork, a skill that is an invaluable component of the design process.

The Advanced Color course is conceptual, but also very hands-on. For one assignment, Engel asks students to put

CONSIDER A CAREER IN COLOR Andrea LaConte-Magno, director of color marketing and development at Benjamin Moore, will never forget her first color class at NYSID. She says, “I had a background in studio art and had been an art history major at Lafayette College, so I already knew a lot about color, but at NYSID we were taught to consider how color lives in threedimensional spaces, and to mix artists’ paints in precise amounts to complement colors found in fabrics and other materials. This knowledge still comes into play with almost everything I do at Benjamin Moore.” Back then, a guest lecturer in her course on materials and finishes, the well-known color marketer Ken Charbonneau, then director of color at Benjamin Moore, left her inspired. She remembers, “I was hanging on every word.” Little did she know that decades down the line she would become one of his successors, occupying the equivalent position at Benjamin Moore. Says LaConte-Magno, “One of the things that was great about NYSID were the industry connections that faculty brought into class.”

LaConte-Magno encourages NYSID graduates to “go into their careers with open minds” about where they might wind up in the design industry. She got an internship at the prestigious residential interior design and architecture firm Ingrao, Inc. when she was still in the Associate program, and was hired full time after graduation. She loved designing interiors, but when presented with a position focused on designing color schemes for commercial properties for Benjamin Moore, she went for it because she has always understood the power of color.

“I have always been drawn to color because there is something so transformative about it. You can create such a different mood just by changing the color on the walls,” she says. “Working with people to find the right color, listening to what they are looking for, seeing it come to fruition, and experiencing the happiness it brings to clients is really gratifying.”

FALL 2021 | 23

LaConte-Magno was promoted four times at Benjamin Moore, taking on the role of director of color marketing and development in 2019. Among the aspects of her job she loves most is the research and travel that goes into forecasting color trends. She says, “I think of color research much like the work of an anthropologist, digging for influences and then bringing it together to develop our color trends palette each year.” She adds, “I also have a strong focus on understanding the needs of the customer when it comes to color, whether that customer is a homeowner, a contractor, or a professional designer.

We develop tools, both physical and digital, to help people make solid and informed decisions about color.”

LaConte-Magno notes, “Everybody wants to work for a big architecture firm while they are in school but there are opportunities out there that are different and really fulfilling. I had no idea this kind of role event existed.

There may be a niche that works for your individual talents that becomes the perfect route for you.” ·

RENDERED IMAGES FROM ADVANCED COLOR STUDENTS.

22 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

on their aprons and paint triptychs. He also believes that in today’s increasingly digital world, students have to be able to communicate the specifics of a color digitally. Early in the course he asks students to take a color they love from Benjamin Moore, print it on the computer, match it in Photoshop, and tweak the color until they can be sure the color they show their client in a presentation matches what will go in the space. “Understanding the difference between what we see on the computer and the actual color in three-dimensional space is crucial, he says. “This has to be part of color education now.”

ABOVE: WILLIAM ENGEL IN FRONT OF ONE OF HIS PAINTINGS. RIGHT: ANDREA LACONTE-MAGNO, DIRECTOR OF COLOR MARKETING, AND DEVELOPMENT AT BENJAMIN MOORE.

NEXT, USE COLOR AS THE DRIVER OF DESIGN Alumnus William Engel is a painter who works closely with interior designers and architects to create artwork that helps tell the story of a space, or a whole building, through color. He maintains painting studios in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC and in San Diego, California. He’s also a legendary NYSID instructor who has been teaching color for 16 years at the school (and other courses for longer). After years of teaching Color 141, he worked with NYSID’s Office of Academic Affairs to develop NYSID’s Advanced Color course (for graduates and undergraduates), also known as Color 339.

Engel says, “The difference in the Advanced Color course is that we are working with color as a driver of the design project rather than an application.” Engel got the idea for the course when he was collaborating with Edwin Zawadzki, the cofounder of In Situ Design, and Lilian Bakhash, the owner of Lilian B Interiors (both NYSID faculty members) on the William Hotel in Manhattan.

Engel and Zawadzki pitched the hotel developer the concept of a hotel that evoked the impression of “poured color, with every floor representing a different hue.” The design treated the entire interior of this twin Victorian townhouse as a canvas for color.

The assignments in Advanced Color challenge students to derive a design concept from color. For example, Engel challenges students to analyze a movie in regards to how the director uses color to advance the form and narrative of the film. He then challenges the students to apply the color story of a specific film to a space with an entrance hallway, boxy space, transitional hallway, and open living space, so that students begin to understand how color moves people through space and emotion. Engel allows the students to select any film, from North by Northwest to Cinderella. Says Engel, “They have to use the film’s color story to create movement and moments within this space.

What comes out of this assignment is fascinating. They get so into it.”

For the culmination of Advanced Color, students have to analyze one painting, or the body of work, from an artist they admire. They then have to break down the color scheme of the painting into a palette and apply it to a SketchUp or PowerPoint presentation of a small apartment for a client. The students have to be able to communicate about their color choices and how they relate to the artwork, a skill that is an invaluable component of the design process.

The Advanced Color course is conceptual, but also very hands-on. For one assignment, Engel asks students to put

CONSIDER A CAREER IN COLOR Andrea LaConte-Magno, director of color marketing and development at Benjamin Moore, will never forget her first color class at NYSID. She says, “I had a background in studio art and had been an art history major at Lafayette College, so I already knew a lot about color, but at NYSID we were taught to consider how color lives in threedimensional spaces, and to mix artists’ paints in precise amounts to complement colors found in fabrics and other materials. This knowledge still comes into play with almost everything I do at Benjamin Moore.” Back then, a guest lecturer in her course on materials and finishes, the well-known color marketer Ken Charbonneau, then director of color at Benjamin Moore, left her inspired. She remembers, “I was hanging on every word.” Little did she know that decades down the line she would become one of his successors, occupying the equivalent position at Benjamin Moore. Says LaConte-Magno, “One of the things that was great about NYSID were the industry connections that faculty brought into class.”

LaConte-Magno encourages NYSID graduates to “go into their careers with open minds” about where they might wind up in the design industry. She got an internship at the prestigious residential interior design and architecture firm Ingrao, Inc. when she was still in the Associate program, and was hired full time after graduation. She loved designing interiors, but when presented with a position focused on designing color schemes for commercial properties for Benjamin Moore, she went for it because she has always understood the power of color.

“I have always been drawn to color because there is something so transformative about it. You can create such a different mood just by changing the color on the walls,” she says. “Working with people to find the right color, listening to what they are looking for, seeing it come to fruition, and experiencing the happiness it brings to clients is really gratifying.”

FALL 2021 | 23

LaConte-Magno was promoted four times at Benjamin Moore, taking on the role of director of color marketing and development in 2019. Among the aspects of her job she loves most is the research and travel that goes into forecasting color trends. She says, “I think of color research much like the work of an anthropologist, digging for influences and then bringing it together to develop our color trends palette each year.” She adds, “I also have a strong focus on understanding the needs of the customer when it comes to color, whether that customer is a homeowner, a contractor, or a professional designer.

We develop tools, both physical and digital, to help people make solid and informed decisions about color.”

LaConte-Magno notes, “Everybody wants to work for a big architecture firm while they are in school but there are opportunities out there that are different and really fulfilling. I had no idea this kind of role event existed.

There may be a niche that works for your individual talents that becomes the perfect route for you.” ·

RENDERED IMAGES FROM ADVANCED COLOR STUDENTS.

24 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

The Future of Sustainable Design Eric Corey Freed on Bold Innovation in Green Building senior project manager, Perkins&Will; Avinash Rajagopal, editor-in-chief, Metropolis Magazine (sponsored by Sandow); and many other thought-leaders in sustainability and green design. The conference will challenge the design community to create spaces that are not only beautiful and healthy, but also responsible, ethical, and effective. Here’s a taste of what Eric Corey Freed has to say about the way forward for deep green buildings.

Eric Corey Freed is an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker. As senior vice president of sustainability for CannonDesign, he leads his company’s healthcare, education, and commercial teams toward better and higher-performing buildings for over 15 million square feet a year. For two decades, he was founding principal of organicARCHITECT, a visionary design leader in biophilic and regenerative design. His past roles include vice president of the International Living Future Institute and chief community officer of EcoDistricts, both nonprofits pushing innovative new paradigms for deep green buildings and communities. Freed is the author of 12 books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies.” In 2012, he was named one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.” In 2017, he was named one of Build’s American Architecture Top 25. He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council. He has taught the Sustainable Design Capstone program at Boston Architectural College since 2013.

Freed will be one of three keynote speakers at NYSID’s Teaching Green symposium for design educators on October 8–9. This two-day virtual and in-person symposium on making sustainability a cornerstone of design education will feature Andrew Revkin, director of the Initiative on Communication, Innovation, and Impact at the Earth Institute; Jennifer Graham, principal and

NYSID: What movements and innovations in sustainable design excite you?

ECF: Well, I’m excited about all of it. There’s so much going on, but I’ll encapsulate it in three major movements.

To start, there’s the big drive toward net zero energy.

NYSID: Will you define net zero energy as it exists in your practice?

ECF: Net zero energy refers to buildings that produce more energy than they consume. First, you need to understand the reason why this is so important: The design, construction, and operations of buildings are responsible for more than half of the carbon emissions related to climate change. By making a net zero building, we are essentially making a building that is not contributing to emissions because we are “zeroing out” the impact of the building; the building is producing more energy than it’s consuming. Now, the way we do this is we look at the skin of the building—Is it a high-performance, energy-efficient skin? We look at the systems in the building, specifically the mechanical systems, the lighting, all the plug loads. We look at the orientation and massing of the building so that way we’re not getting a ton of sun in the summer when we don’t want it adding burden to the cooling system, and we are maximizing the sunlight in the winter when we need it to drive down the heating bill. We build an ultra-energyefficient, high-performance building, and then we put solar panels, wind turbines, or geothermal energy systems into the design to make up for the energy the building uses.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

NYSID: Apologies—I interrupted before you could explain the other two major movements in sustainable design. What are they?

ECF: There are exciting new ways to track, measure, and mitigate embodied carbon. When we’re talking about embodied carbon, we’re referring to all the upfront effort and energy that goes into making something. For example, that shirt you’re wearing, that has a carbon footprint.

There’s the impact of sourcing the materials and dyes, there’s the energy of making it, and there’s the packing and shipping it from afar. Every product has an embodied carbon footprint. Of all the carbon emissions that come from buildings, about half come from running the building and its systems, the other half come from the embodied carbon from making it. Think about a traditional building: all of that drywall, steel, and concrete. Just the production of concrete, specifically, the ingredient of Portland cement, is responsible for 8 to 12% of all carbon emissions in the world every year! It’s a massive amount of wasted energy that can be conserved if there’s a system to track and measure embodied carbon. These systems empower people to make better choices.

“ Don’t wait to be asked to

do something innovative.”

—ERIC COREY FREED The third movement is materiality, which has become a large science. Materiality really affects the health profile of the building. I’m designing a cancer center in New Jersey now, and I asked the client, Wouldn’t it be a good idea to avoid all known carcinogens in the cancer center? They said, Of course, which is great, but shouldn’t this be the goal for every cancer center, for every building? Well, it’s not.

Most of the traditional building materials commonly used are horribly toxic: the paints, the caulking, the sealants, the solvents, the adhesives, the formaldehyde that holds the cabinetry together. All of this forms a toxic soup that is horrible for human health. We’re now able to track, measure, and find out about the effect of these things on human health and behavior. We’ve got it down to a science in which we can track in parts per billion how human beings will be affected by the interiors.

With data, I can do amazing things with healthier materials, better ventilation, energy efficiency, and biophilic design, such as reduce absenteeism (through the use of fresh air), increase productivity (through the selection of healthy finishes), boost cognitive performance (by designing an approach to daylight and views), produce

FALL 2021 | 25

TEACHING GREEN This leader in deep green building will be one of four keynotes at NYSID’s “Teaching Green: A Symposium on Sustainability in Interior Design Education.”

October 8–9, 2021 teachinggreen.nysid.edu Teaching Green is a recipient of a major grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

higher valuations (through certification and process), retain talent (through wellness and air quality), lower premiums (by planning for resilience), slash operating costs (through better energy performance), produce higher profit per square foot (using post occupancy evaluations), and reduce patient length of stay (through a therapeutic environment). That’s just the beginning.

NYSID: Why do you teach sustainable design?

What’s your advice about teaching sustainability?

ECF: One reason I teach is that I need to have an impact.

I measure my success in terms of positive change, and teaching is a direct line into that. There are thousands of students I’ve gotten to influence and learn from in my many years as an instructor (of architecture students).

I think just about every student that starts in sustainability is optimistic, but then they hit this wall of reality, when they realize how bad it is and what we’re up against. It’s like the five stages of grief, in which the final stage is acceptance, when students realize it’s really up to them to do something. This is the big moment of opportunity, and what I teach is sustainability as an opportunity. It’s not about already having the knowledge: we are doing things now that did not exist 18 months ago.

The point is to ask the questions and seek out the answers.

All you need is a better idea. If you can communicate that idea, you will attract people to you who can help you bring that vision to life. The most important thing I teach is this: Don’t wait to be asked to do something innovative. You have to make change happen. You don’t have to wait to be a sustainability expert. You just have to have a bold vision that solves a problem. ·

24 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

The Future of Sustainable Design Eric Corey Freed on Bold Innovation in Green Building senior project manager, Perkins&Will; Avinash Rajagopal, editor-in-chief, Metropolis Magazine (sponsored by Sandow); and many other thought-leaders in sustainability and green design. The conference will challenge the design community to create spaces that are not only beautiful and healthy, but also responsible, ethical, and effective. Here’s a taste of what Eric Corey Freed has to say about the way forward for deep green buildings.

Eric Corey Freed is an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker. As senior vice president of sustainability for CannonDesign, he leads his company’s healthcare, education, and commercial teams toward better and higher-performing buildings for over 15 million square feet a year. For two decades, he was founding principal of organicARCHITECT, a visionary design leader in biophilic and regenerative design. His past roles include vice president of the International Living Future Institute and chief community officer of EcoDistricts, both nonprofits pushing innovative new paradigms for deep green buildings and communities. Freed is the author of 12 books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies.” In 2012, he was named one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.” In 2017, he was named one of Build’s American Architecture Top 25. He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council. He has taught the Sustainable Design Capstone program at Boston Architectural College since 2013.

Freed will be one of three keynote speakers at NYSID’s Teaching Green symposium for design educators on October 8–9. This two-day virtual and in-person symposium on making sustainability a cornerstone of design education will feature Andrew Revkin, director of the Initiative on Communication, Innovation, and Impact at the Earth Institute; Jennifer Graham, principal and

NYSID: What movements and innovations in sustainable design excite you?

ECF: Well, I’m excited about all of it. There’s so much going on, but I’ll encapsulate it in three major movements.

To start, there’s the big drive toward net zero energy.

NYSID: Will you define net zero energy as it exists in your practice?

ECF: Net zero energy refers to buildings that produce more energy than they consume. First, you need to understand the reason why this is so important: The design, construction, and operations of buildings are responsible for more than half of the carbon emissions related to climate change. By making a net zero building, we are essentially making a building that is not contributing to emissions because we are “zeroing out” the impact of the building; the building is producing more energy than it’s consuming. Now, the way we do this is we look at the skin of the building—Is it a high-performance, energy-efficient skin? We look at the systems in the building, specifically the mechanical systems, the lighting, all the plug loads. We look at the orientation and massing of the building so that way we’re not getting a ton of sun in the summer when we don’t want it adding burden to the cooling system, and we are maximizing the sunlight in the winter when we need it to drive down the heating bill. We build an ultra-energyefficient, high-performance building, and then we put solar panels, wind turbines, or geothermal energy systems into the design to make up for the energy the building uses.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

NYSID: Apologies—I interrupted before you could explain the other two major movements in sustainable design. What are they?

ECF: There are exciting new ways to track, measure, and mitigate embodied carbon. When we’re talking about embodied carbon, we’re referring to all the upfront effort and energy that goes into making something. For example, that shirt you’re wearing, that has a carbon footprint.

There’s the impact of sourcing the materials and dyes, there’s the energy of making it, and there’s the packing and shipping it from afar. Every product has an embodied carbon footprint. Of all the carbon emissions that come from buildings, about half come from running the building and its systems, the other half come from the embodied carbon from making it. Think about a traditional building: all of that drywall, steel, and concrete. Just the production of concrete, specifically, the ingredient of Portland cement, is responsible for 8 to 12% of all carbon emissions in the world every year! It’s a massive amount of wasted energy that can be conserved if there’s a system to track and measure embodied carbon. These systems empower people to make better choices.

“ Don’t wait to be asked to

do something innovative.”

—ERIC COREY FREED The third movement is materiality, which has become a large science. Materiality really affects the health profile of the building. I’m designing a cancer center in New Jersey now, and I asked the client, Wouldn’t it be a good idea to avoid all known carcinogens in the cancer center? They said, Of course, which is great, but shouldn’t this be the goal for every cancer center, for every building? Well, it’s not.

Most of the traditional building materials commonly used are horribly toxic: the paints, the caulking, the sealants, the solvents, the adhesives, the formaldehyde that holds the cabinetry together. All of this forms a toxic soup that is horrible for human health. We’re now able to track, measure, and find out about the effect of these things on human health and behavior. We’ve got it down to a science in which we can track in parts per billion how human beings will be affected by the interiors.

With data, I can do amazing things with healthier materials, better ventilation, energy efficiency, and biophilic design, such as reduce absenteeism (through the use of fresh air), increase productivity (through the selection of healthy finishes), boost cognitive performance (by designing an approach to daylight and views), produce

FALL 2021 | 25

TEACHING GREEN This leader in deep green building will be one of four keynotes at NYSID’s “Teaching Green: A Symposium on Sustainability in Interior Design Education.”

October 8–9, 2021 teachinggreen.nysid.edu Teaching Green is a recipient of a major grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

higher valuations (through certification and process), retain talent (through wellness and air quality), lower premiums (by planning for resilience), slash operating costs (through better energy performance), produce higher profit per square foot (using post occupancy evaluations), and reduce patient length of stay (through a therapeutic environment). That’s just the beginning.

NYSID: Why do you teach sustainable design?

What’s your advice about teaching sustainability?

ECF: One reason I teach is that I need to have an impact.

I measure my success in terms of positive change, and teaching is a direct line into that. There are thousands of students I’ve gotten to influence and learn from in my many years as an instructor (of architecture students).

I think just about every student that starts in sustainability is optimistic, but then they hit this wall of reality, when they realize how bad it is and what we’re up against. It’s like the five stages of grief, in which the final stage is acceptance, when students realize it’s really up to them to do something. This is the big moment of opportunity, and what I teach is sustainability as an opportunity. It’s not about already having the knowledge: we are doing things now that did not exist 18 months ago.

The point is to ask the questions and seek out the answers.

All you need is a better idea. If you can communicate that idea, you will attract people to you who can help you bring that vision to life. The most important thing I teach is this: Don’t wait to be asked to do something innovative. You have to make change happen. You don’t have to wait to be a sustainability expert. You just have to have a bold vision that solves a problem. ·

26 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Design Educator’s Impact Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal’s message to NYSID as she retires

O

ne of the most magical things about Barbara Lowenthal is that she finds every mind, every classroom, energizing after decades of teaching and administrating at NYSID. Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Barbara’s thinking and teaching have become part of the DNA of this College.” Here’s what this beloved educator has to say about her 27-year tenure at NYSID.

LOWENTHAL ON A STUDY-ABROAD TRIP TO VIENNA WITH HER STUDENTS IN 2017.

Barbara Lowenthal, RA, NCIDQ, IDEC, began teaching at NYSID in 1994, when her youngest son was an infant. For her first three years at NYSID, she taught Contract Design I in the BFA program at night. Eventually word of her teaching prowess spread, and Scott Ageloff, the VP/dean at the time, offered her more classes. She soon found herself teaching 12 to 13 credits a semester, from BFA Design Process, Contract Design II, and BFA thesis, to MFA2 Directed Thesis Research and Thesis, and numerous MFA1 studios.

Lowenthal became a NYSID administrator in 2008 when she became area coordinator for MFA programs, and she rose to the position of associate dean in 2014. After almost 27 years at NYSID, she retired from most of her duties as associate dean at the end of 2020, but she’s continuing to work part time with the College as a consultant through the fall. She shares her story in her own words.

NYSID: What did you actually do as associate dean?

What did you like best about your job?

BL: I liked being involved with the entire “life cycle” of NYSID students: recruiting prospective students at admissions events, bringing my special perspective to teaching in the classroom, assessing student work at all levels of the BFA and MFA programs through critiques and accreditations, helping our students find jobs, and staying in touch with our graduates wherever they go in the world. I enjoyed mentoring and problem-solving with students and faculty who dropped by my office, traveling and teaching students in study abroad, recruiting distinguished practitioners to our MFA Advisory Board and learning from their suggestions, reaching beyond the school through my involvement with the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) to learn from other design educators, and finally writing new projects and planning new curricula for new students—one of best parts of my job. One PowerPoint I originally put together for new MFA1 students, Elements and Principles of Design, is now being used in all sorts of introductory courses across the school. If you’re a current student, you’ve probably seen it.

NYSID: You were instrumental in the creation of the MFA1. What was your role?

BL: The VP/dean at that time (2008), Scott Ageloff, pushed for the program, and worked with the former president, Christopher Cyphers, and Ellen Fisher, who was associate dean then, on getting New York State approval for the program. It was their vision to have a studio system with dedicated workspace. I was brought in to help execute the program. I worked with Scott and Ellen to develop content for 18 new classes, conduct faculty selection and

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

mentoring, and review of all of the materials for dedicated courses. There was not a project I did not see and approve.

NYSID: What accomplishments are you most proud of as you look back at your NYSID tenure?

BL: I think I had the most impact as a teacher. Plus, being in the classroom gives you invaluable insight into students’ experiences, and that helps you become a better administrator.

The MFA1 program feels like a big success, not only because it’s grown so robust, but also because we have continually improved it. What I learned from my close relationships with MFA1 students early in the program’s history was that the 11-month schedule was crushing.

Students needed flexible summers to see families who lived far away, to enjoy some downtime, and to get internship experience. In response to this student feedback, after the 2012 MFA1 CIDA accreditation, Ellen Fisher and I carved out space in the program for the summer experiential learning courses. We gave students the choice to do internships for credit, take “service-learning studios’’ in which they do real, pro bono design work for good causes, or do travel or independent study. It’s a chance to pursue the things that most interest them. Our summer experiential learning program is unique to NYSID, and our students leave the MFA1 program with real experience and amazing portfolios because of it.

I’m also proud that the BFA and MFA programs have been nationally recognized as being among the best in the country. Of course, this is not just my accomplishment: the whole faculty, staff, and administration have been instrumental. What we’ve done in recent years to increase and improve online learning, especially during the pandemic, is also an extraordinary team accomplishment.

NYSID: You always taught, even as associate dean. Why? BL: I like the challenge of teaching interior design, the balance between pragmatic and conceptual thinking.

When I teach, I feel focused and absorbed. I get into the flow of it. And I like being able to connect interior design to cultural references I care about, like art, literature, and rock and roll—even when my students stare blankly when I mention some band I like.

The best parts of teaching occur when a student responds to your suggestions by surpassing your expectations and taking it to the next level. An important part of being an educator is to truly listen to students, to help them figure out what they really want, and to guide them to the best version of their ideas. And of course, there’s the novelty factor: every semester, every class, and every student is different. It never feels repetitive.

FALL 2021 | 27

NYSID: What do you want to say to the thousands of interior design alumni you educated?

BL: Interior design education is all about seeing, analyzing, and understanding the built environment in new and meaningful ways. For better or for worse, once you see the world as an interior designer, that’s that—there’s no turning back. It enriches your life whatever path you take.

“ I first encountered Barbara as my studio teacher

when I began my own studies at NYSID. For the 20 years since, her nurturing, witty personality, and brilliant, sharp mind have become an integral source of inspiration. I treasure her as a hardworking colleague, enthusiastic travel companion, confidante, and dear friend.”

— STEFAN STEIL ’08 (BFA) Principal of Steilish Interior Design, NYSID instructor NYSID: Do you have anything you want to say to your colleagues as you retire?

BL: I want to thank every one of them for making my professional life easier—or at least more interesting.

One of my favorite parts of being an administrator was collaborating with faculty in creating and refining their courses. True collaboration is not that easy, and I always felt our work together was a dialogue among equals.

Working with the Office of Academic Affairs gang has been truly rewarding and they’ve been there for me in the good times and the bad. And I have a special fondness for the staff at the Graduate Center who have been my friends and troubleshooters.

It was also a privilege to work with Ellen Fisher (VP and dean of academic affairs). Throughout our long working relationship, we have collaborated really effectively to advance our students’ education. I’ll never forget our many meetings about curricula at Mariella Pizza, or the night before our 2012 BFA and MFA1 CIDA accreditation reports were due, working at school ’till midnight, and then ending up in an unfamiliar midtown hotel that looked just like it had been designed by one of our students. Ellen has done a great deal for this school and enabled me to be a part of it.

NYSID: Do you have plans for your retirement?

BL: First, I will redesign my kitchen. And I’ve always wanted to have more time to write and draw (by hand!).

When the pandemic is over, I’ll hopefully see more of northwest Connecticut, where I moved in 2020, and more of Europe. I know I won’t be bored. ·

26 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

FEATURES

A Design Educator’s Impact Associate Dean Barbara Lowenthal’s message to NYSID as she retires

O

ne of the most magical things about Barbara Lowenthal is that she finds every mind, every classroom, energizing after decades of teaching and administrating at NYSID. Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Barbara’s thinking and teaching have become part of the DNA of this College.” Here’s what this beloved educator has to say about her 27-year tenure at NYSID.

LOWENTHAL ON A STUDY-ABROAD TRIP TO VIENNA WITH HER STUDENTS IN 2017.

Barbara Lowenthal, RA, NCIDQ, IDEC, began teaching at NYSID in 1994, when her youngest son was an infant. For her first three years at NYSID, she taught Contract Design I in the BFA program at night. Eventually word of her teaching prowess spread, and Scott Ageloff, the VP/dean at the time, offered her more classes. She soon found herself teaching 12 to 13 credits a semester, from BFA Design Process, Contract Design II, and BFA thesis, to MFA2 Directed Thesis Research and Thesis, and numerous MFA1 studios.

Lowenthal became a NYSID administrator in 2008 when she became area coordinator for MFA programs, and she rose to the position of associate dean in 2014. After almost 27 years at NYSID, she retired from most of her duties as associate dean at the end of 2020, but she’s continuing to work part time with the College as a consultant through the fall. She shares her story in her own words.

NYSID: What did you actually do as associate dean?

What did you like best about your job?

BL: I liked being involved with the entire “life cycle” of NYSID students: recruiting prospective students at admissions events, bringing my special perspective to teaching in the classroom, assessing student work at all levels of the BFA and MFA programs through critiques and accreditations, helping our students find jobs, and staying in touch with our graduates wherever they go in the world. I enjoyed mentoring and problem-solving with students and faculty who dropped by my office, traveling and teaching students in study abroad, recruiting distinguished practitioners to our MFA Advisory Board and learning from their suggestions, reaching beyond the school through my involvement with the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) to learn from other design educators, and finally writing new projects and planning new curricula for new students—one of best parts of my job. One PowerPoint I originally put together for new MFA1 students, Elements and Principles of Design, is now being used in all sorts of introductory courses across the school. If you’re a current student, you’ve probably seen it.

NYSID: You were instrumental in the creation of the MFA1. What was your role?

BL: The VP/dean at that time (2008), Scott Ageloff, pushed for the program, and worked with the former president, Christopher Cyphers, and Ellen Fisher, who was associate dean then, on getting New York State approval for the program. It was their vision to have a studio system with dedicated workspace. I was brought in to help execute the program. I worked with Scott and Ellen to develop content for 18 new classes, conduct faculty selection and

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

mentoring, and review of all of the materials for dedicated courses. There was not a project I did not see and approve.

NYSID: What accomplishments are you most proud of as you look back at your NYSID tenure?

BL: I think I had the most impact as a teacher. Plus, being in the classroom gives you invaluable insight into students’ experiences, and that helps you become a better administrator.

The MFA1 program feels like a big success, not only because it’s grown so robust, but also because we have continually improved it. What I learned from my close relationships with MFA1 students early in the program’s history was that the 11-month schedule was crushing.

Students needed flexible summers to see families who lived far away, to enjoy some downtime, and to get internship experience. In response to this student feedback, after the 2012 MFA1 CIDA accreditation, Ellen Fisher and I carved out space in the program for the summer experiential learning courses. We gave students the choice to do internships for credit, take “service-learning studios’’ in which they do real, pro bono design work for good causes, or do travel or independent study. It’s a chance to pursue the things that most interest them. Our summer experiential learning program is unique to NYSID, and our students leave the MFA1 program with real experience and amazing portfolios because of it.

I’m also proud that the BFA and MFA programs have been nationally recognized as being among the best in the country. Of course, this is not just my accomplishment: the whole faculty, staff, and administration have been instrumental. What we’ve done in recent years to increase and improve online learning, especially during the pandemic, is also an extraordinary team accomplishment.

NYSID: You always taught, even as associate dean. Why? BL: I like the challenge of teaching interior design, the balance between pragmatic and conceptual thinking.

When I teach, I feel focused and absorbed. I get into the flow of it. And I like being able to connect interior design to cultural references I care about, like art, literature, and rock and roll—even when my students stare blankly when I mention some band I like.

The best parts of teaching occur when a student responds to your suggestions by surpassing your expectations and taking it to the next level. An important part of being an educator is to truly listen to students, to help them figure out what they really want, and to guide them to the best version of their ideas. And of course, there’s the novelty factor: every semester, every class, and every student is different. It never feels repetitive.

FALL 2021 | 27

NYSID: What do you want to say to the thousands of interior design alumni you educated?

BL: Interior design education is all about seeing, analyzing, and understanding the built environment in new and meaningful ways. For better or for worse, once you see the world as an interior designer, that’s that—there’s no turning back. It enriches your life whatever path you take.

“ I first encountered Barbara as my studio teacher

when I began my own studies at NYSID. For the 20 years since, her nurturing, witty personality, and brilliant, sharp mind have become an integral source of inspiration. I treasure her as a hardworking colleague, enthusiastic travel companion, confidante, and dear friend.”

— STEFAN STEIL ’08 (BFA) Principal of Steilish Interior Design, NYSID instructor NYSID: Do you have anything you want to say to your colleagues as you retire?

BL: I want to thank every one of them for making my professional life easier—or at least more interesting.

One of my favorite parts of being an administrator was collaborating with faculty in creating and refining their courses. True collaboration is not that easy, and I always felt our work together was a dialogue among equals.

Working with the Office of Academic Affairs gang has been truly rewarding and they’ve been there for me in the good times and the bad. And I have a special fondness for the staff at the Graduate Center who have been my friends and troubleshooters.

It was also a privilege to work with Ellen Fisher (VP and dean of academic affairs). Throughout our long working relationship, we have collaborated really effectively to advance our students’ education. I’ll never forget our many meetings about curricula at Mariella Pizza, or the night before our 2012 BFA and MFA1 CIDA accreditation reports were due, working at school ’till midnight, and then ending up in an unfamiliar midtown hotel that looked just like it had been designed by one of our students. Ellen has done a great deal for this school and enabled me to be a part of it.

NYSID: Do you have plans for your retirement?

BL: First, I will redesign my kitchen. And I’ve always wanted to have more time to write and draw (by hand!).

When the pandemic is over, I’ll hopefully see more of northwest Connecticut, where I moved in 2020, and more of Europe. I know I won’t be bored. ·

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 29

GIVING / Supporting Our Community Why I Give: Timur Yumusaklar,

FRANCESCO LAGNESE

President & CEO of Schumacher F. Schumacher & Co., which encompasses two iconic design industry brands, Schumacher and Patterson Flynn, has endowed a new diversity scholarship called the Schumacher Scholarship for Equity & Inclusion at NYSID. The scholarship will be awarded each year to a student from a population historically underrepresented in the field of design, and who shows exceptional promise for making great contributions to the interior design industry. The award is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Recipients will also receive a mentorship with Schumacher to further broaden and deepen their education. With this gift to NYSID, F. Schumacher & Co. has made access to a superior design education possible for worthy students for decades to come. Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “We are working with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Commission to make NYSID a platform for designers from underrepresented communities. We hope to amplify voices that are not heard in the industry, and we are grateful to Schumacher for helping us accomplish this.”

Why has F. Schumacher & Co., a 132-year-old resource to the interior design industry for fabric, wallpaper, carpet, and trim, committed to invest in the higher education of BIPOC (Black, Indigineous, and People of Color) interior designers? We put this question and others to Timur Yumusaklar, the president and CEO of F. Schumacher & Co. Yumusaklar, who is of Turkish descent and grew up in Germany, joined FSCO in February of 2015. Under his stewardship, both iconic brands have been rapidly and dynamically re-energized as leaders in their categories.

NYSID: Why has your company chosen to endow the Schumacher Scholarship for Equity & Inclusion at NYSID? Timur Yumusaklar: For the last 132 years, F. Schumacher & Co. has been at the forefront of design, collaborating with all kinds of designers from all kinds of backgrounds.

We operate around the idea that a beautiful room comes from the diversity of the design in that room. This can only come from a diverse industry. Diversifying design is an exciting creative proposition, and diversifying our industry is crucial. Design is a form of self-expression, and when we have more experiences, cultures, and aesthetics at the table, everything becomes more interesting and dynamic.

The conviction that diversity, equity, and inclusion make the world a more meaningful, beautiful place is at the core of Schumacher’s culture.

NYSID: Of all the schools you could have chosen, why NYSID? TY: NYSID is well known as one of the best institutions for interior design education. For decades now, your school has been producing some of the best-known tastemakers and stylemakers in the industry, both in terms of product designers and interior designers. One of them is David Kleinberg (a NYSID board member and alumnus who, as the owner of David Kleinberg Design Associates, has created a luxury carpet collection for the FSCO brand Patterson Flynn). David introduced us to NYSID’s leadership, and it was a natural fit. NYSID is just as passionate about design as we at F. Schumacher & Co. are.

And our company has been based in New York City ever since it was founded in 1889, so that was a perfect fit, too.

NYSID: What kind of impact do you hope to have by investing in this scholarship?

TY: It is one of our core beliefs that advancing diversity in the industry will come from producing tastemakers and skilled professionals who come from different experiences and speak to different audiences. Investing in students early in their lives is crucial. We think this scholarship will allow us to make an exponential positive impact on the industry.

We want to help develop tastemakers, but also future business owners who will create work environments that are welcoming, equitable, and inclusive for others, and who will expand the number of clients whom interior design serves. This is how we can multiply our impact. It’s not enough to say the right things about diversity. There has to be action and there is no more powerful action than creating access to education, and ultimately, employment for those underrepresented in design.

If you’re interested in supporting our students and the future of the profession through one of NYSID’s scholarship funds, please reach out to Joy Cooper, NYSID’s director of development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

NYSID’s First Virtual Gala: A Real Success

The College Raised More Than a Half-Million Dollars for the Scholarship Funds in a Pandemic Year On Tuesday, April 27, more than 400 households tuned in to watch NYSID’s first virtual gala produced by STAMP Event Management and Boatman Media and hosted by NYSID Trustee Alexa Hampton. Ms. Hampton kept the tone playful and the mission front and center as she MCed, in a stunning gown, from her NYC apartment. Hampton presented Alex Papachristidis with the Albert Hadley Lifetime Achievement Award, Corey Damen Jenkins with the Larry Kravet Design Industry Leadership Award, and NYSID alumna Nina Farmer ’02 with the Rising Star Award (made possible for the third year in a row by The Shade Store). The awards were engraved crystal vases donated by Baccarat.

One of the most powerful aspects of the virtual format was the ability to see inside the homes and ongoing projects of the designers in NYSID’s community as they shared wisdom and well-wishes. NYSID’s development team exceeded its goal for the gala, raising more than $500,000. Every dollar will go towards making the best interior design education possible for deserving students through NYSID’s emergency, diversity, Pre-college, and general scholarship funds. Said NYSID President David Sprouls, “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your support of and confidence in NYSID.” Special thanks to NYSID Board of Trustees chair Ellen Kravet and gala co-chairs Chesie Breen, Alexa Hampton, David Kleinberg, Susan Nagle, Betsey Ruprecht, and Maria Spears, all trustees of NYSID.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 29

GIVING / Supporting Our Community Why I Give: Timur Yumusaklar,

FRANCESCO LAGNESE

President & CEO of Schumacher F. Schumacher & Co., which encompasses two iconic design industry brands, Schumacher and Patterson Flynn, has endowed a new diversity scholarship called the Schumacher Scholarship for Equity & Inclusion at NYSID. The scholarship will be awarded each year to a student from a population historically underrepresented in the field of design, and who shows exceptional promise for making great contributions to the interior design industry. The award is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Recipients will also receive a mentorship with Schumacher to further broaden and deepen their education. With this gift to NYSID, F. Schumacher & Co. has made access to a superior design education possible for worthy students for decades to come. Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “We are working with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Commission to make NYSID a platform for designers from underrepresented communities. We hope to amplify voices that are not heard in the industry, and we are grateful to Schumacher for helping us accomplish this.”

Why has F. Schumacher & Co., a 132-year-old resource to the interior design industry for fabric, wallpaper, carpet, and trim, committed to invest in the higher education of BIPOC (Black, Indigineous, and People of Color) interior designers? We put this question and others to Timur Yumusaklar, the president and CEO of F. Schumacher & Co. Yumusaklar, who is of Turkish descent and grew up in Germany, joined FSCO in February of 2015. Under his stewardship, both iconic brands have been rapidly and dynamically re-energized as leaders in their categories.

NYSID: Why has your company chosen to endow the Schumacher Scholarship for Equity & Inclusion at NYSID? Timur Yumusaklar: For the last 132 years, F. Schumacher & Co. has been at the forefront of design, collaborating with all kinds of designers from all kinds of backgrounds.

We operate around the idea that a beautiful room comes from the diversity of the design in that room. This can only come from a diverse industry. Diversifying design is an exciting creative proposition, and diversifying our industry is crucial. Design is a form of self-expression, and when we have more experiences, cultures, and aesthetics at the table, everything becomes more interesting and dynamic.

The conviction that diversity, equity, and inclusion make the world a more meaningful, beautiful place is at the core of Schumacher’s culture.

NYSID: Of all the schools you could have chosen, why NYSID? TY: NYSID is well known as one of the best institutions for interior design education. For decades now, your school has been producing some of the best-known tastemakers and stylemakers in the industry, both in terms of product designers and interior designers. One of them is David Kleinberg (a NYSID board member and alumnus who, as the owner of David Kleinberg Design Associates, has created a luxury carpet collection for the FSCO brand Patterson Flynn). David introduced us to NYSID’s leadership, and it was a natural fit. NYSID is just as passionate about design as we at F. Schumacher & Co. are.

And our company has been based in New York City ever since it was founded in 1889, so that was a perfect fit, too.

NYSID: What kind of impact do you hope to have by investing in this scholarship?

TY: It is one of our core beliefs that advancing diversity in the industry will come from producing tastemakers and skilled professionals who come from different experiences and speak to different audiences. Investing in students early in their lives is crucial. We think this scholarship will allow us to make an exponential positive impact on the industry.

We want to help develop tastemakers, but also future business owners who will create work environments that are welcoming, equitable, and inclusive for others, and who will expand the number of clients whom interior design serves. This is how we can multiply our impact. It’s not enough to say the right things about diversity. There has to be action and there is no more powerful action than creating access to education, and ultimately, employment for those underrepresented in design.

If you’re interested in supporting our students and the future of the profession through one of NYSID’s scholarship funds, please reach out to Joy Cooper, NYSID’s director of development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

NYSID’s First Virtual Gala: A Real Success

The College Raised More Than a Half-Million Dollars for the Scholarship Funds in a Pandemic Year On Tuesday, April 27, more than 400 households tuned in to watch NYSID’s first virtual gala produced by STAMP Event Management and Boatman Media and hosted by NYSID Trustee Alexa Hampton. Ms. Hampton kept the tone playful and the mission front and center as she MCed, in a stunning gown, from her NYC apartment. Hampton presented Alex Papachristidis with the Albert Hadley Lifetime Achievement Award, Corey Damen Jenkins with the Larry Kravet Design Industry Leadership Award, and NYSID alumna Nina Farmer ’02 with the Rising Star Award (made possible for the third year in a row by The Shade Store). The awards were engraved crystal vases donated by Baccarat.

One of the most powerful aspects of the virtual format was the ability to see inside the homes and ongoing projects of the designers in NYSID’s community as they shared wisdom and well-wishes. NYSID’s development team exceeded its goal for the gala, raising more than $500,000. Every dollar will go towards making the best interior design education possible for deserving students through NYSID’s emergency, diversity, Pre-college, and general scholarship funds. Said NYSID President David Sprouls, “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your support of and confidence in NYSID.” Special thanks to NYSID Board of Trustees chair Ellen Kravet and gala co-chairs Chesie Breen, Alexa Hampton, David Kleinberg, Susan Nagle, Betsey Ruprecht, and Maria Spears, all trustees of NYSID.

30 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

GALA CONTINUED

GIVING

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Equity Starts with Early Access to Design Education The Kravet Family Makes Pre-college Possible for Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Kids The Kravet family has committed to donate $100K over the next five years in order to send underserved and underrepresented high school students, enrolled in the Kips Bay Summer Youth Employment Program, to NYSID’s Pre-college Program.

Children living in underserved communities rarely hear of interior design as a career for themselves and have few role models of designers in their childhoods. This new partnership between Kips Bay and NYSID, made possible

by Kravet Inc., is designed to help young people see themselves in interior design. “Our family is very pleased to be able to give this grant that introduces students to our industry,” says Ellen Kravet, who is both chair of the New York School of Interior Design’s Board, and executive vice president and co-owner of Kravet Inc. “The Kips Bay pipeline seemed the perfect opportunity to do this. There are so many opportunities for NYSID’s faculty to educate the next generation of interested young adults.”

Says James Druckman, who is both president of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and also a trustee of NYSID, “This meaningful donation creates a greater connection between The Club and an industry that is committed to supporting it. NYSID remains the premier institution for design

FALL 2021 | 31

PRE-COLLEGE FUND NYSID has started a Pre-college Fund to help expose underrepresented teenagers to design career options early in their lives. If you’re interested in supporting the Pre-college fund, reach out to Joy Cooper, NYSID’s director of development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

education in the country. In recent years, the school has focused on broadening its programs and diversity, making interior design careers more accessible. The partnership between Kravet and NYSID will open doors for so many young adults and ultimately foster exceptional new talent for our industry.”

Pre-college students at NYSID spend two weeks to a month of the summer learning the basics of interior design from professional designers who teach in our undergraduate or graduate programs. Participating students design for a theoretical client, providing drawings, plans, and mood boards, as well as selecting furniture, fixtures, and textiles. They visit design firms and showrooms. It’s a taste of life as a designer.

This generous scholarship donation from the Kravet family will make it possible for a total of 35 students, seven every year for five years, to attend NYSID’s Pre-college I and II programs (for a total of four weeks). Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Making a career in interior design accessible to a broader demographic of people is a priority of this College. These scholarships from the Kravet family will change lives, and the field of interior design.” ·

LEFT: THE KRAVET FAMILY.

TOP TWO ROWS: ALEX PAPACHRISTIDIS, COREY DAMEN JENKINS, AND NINA FARMER RECEIVE AWARDS FROM NYSID TRUSTEEE ALEXA HAMPTON. BOTTOM ROW: GORGEOUS SPACES DESIGNED BY NYSID ALUMNA AND “RISING STAR” NINA FARMER.

30 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

GALA CONTINUED

GIVING

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Equity Starts with Early Access to Design Education The Kravet Family Makes Pre-college Possible for Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Kids The Kravet family has committed to donate $100K over the next five years in order to send underserved and underrepresented high school students, enrolled in the Kips Bay Summer Youth Employment Program, to NYSID’s Pre-college Program.

Children living in underserved communities rarely hear of interior design as a career for themselves and have few role models of designers in their childhoods. This new partnership between Kips Bay and NYSID, made possible

by Kravet Inc., is designed to help young people see themselves in interior design. “Our family is very pleased to be able to give this grant that introduces students to our industry,” says Ellen Kravet, who is both chair of the New York School of Interior Design’s Board, and executive vice president and co-owner of Kravet Inc. “The Kips Bay pipeline seemed the perfect opportunity to do this. There are so many opportunities for NYSID’s faculty to educate the next generation of interested young adults.”

Says James Druckman, who is both president of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and also a trustee of NYSID, “This meaningful donation creates a greater connection between The Club and an industry that is committed to supporting it. NYSID remains the premier institution for design

FALL 2021 | 31

PRE-COLLEGE FUND NYSID has started a Pre-college Fund to help expose underrepresented teenagers to design career options early in their lives. If you’re interested in supporting the Pre-college fund, reach out to Joy Cooper, NYSID’s director of development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

education in the country. In recent years, the school has focused on broadening its programs and diversity, making interior design careers more accessible. The partnership between Kravet and NYSID will open doors for so many young adults and ultimately foster exceptional new talent for our industry.”

Pre-college students at NYSID spend two weeks to a month of the summer learning the basics of interior design from professional designers who teach in our undergraduate or graduate programs. Participating students design for a theoretical client, providing drawings, plans, and mood boards, as well as selecting furniture, fixtures, and textiles. They visit design firms and showrooms. It’s a taste of life as a designer.

This generous scholarship donation from the Kravet family will make it possible for a total of 35 students, seven every year for five years, to attend NYSID’s Pre-college I and II programs (for a total of four weeks). Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Making a career in interior design accessible to a broader demographic of people is a priority of this College. These scholarships from the Kravet family will change lives, and the field of interior design.” ·

LEFT: THE KRAVET FAMILY.

TOP TWO ROWS: ALEX PAPACHRISTIDIS, COREY DAMEN JENKINS, AND NINA FARMER RECEIVE AWARDS FROM NYSID TRUSTEEE ALEXA HAMPTON. BOTTOM ROW: GORGEOUS SPACES DESIGNED BY NYSID ALUMNA AND “RISING STAR” NINA FARMER.

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 33

COMMENCEMENT 2021 Honorary Doctorate Recipients Adam Sandow and Kia Weatherspoon Shared Advice on Designing for this Unique Historical Moment with the Class of 2021

“ Approach every obstacle through

the lens of creativity and innovation.”

— ADAM SANDOW, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient

“ Our craft requires that we design for all people… Our profession should have a purpose.”

— KIA WEATHERSPOON, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient On May 27, 2021, for the second time in its 105-year history, NYSID held its commencement ceremony virtually after a period of challenge and change brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some graduates participated from afar; some from nearby. The themes of the day were creativity in the face of our society’s greatest problems and designing for the realities of a world altered by the pandemic. The commencement experience consisted of a live stream of the ceremony interspersed with prerecorded elements, a Zoom viewing party that enabled graduates to chat with each other and their instructors, and a virtual gallery of student thesis projects. Ellen Kravet, chair of NYSID’s Board of Trustees, said, “The pandemic changed the way people live and work, the way they want to travel, how students learn, and how healthcare is delivered…. It is you who will guide us into this new era of opportunity.”

President Sprouls conferred honorary doctorates upon entrepreneur Adam Sandow, founder & chairman of SANDOW Companies and founder and CEO of Material

Bank, and Kia Weatherspoon, a well-known design equity advocate and president of Determined by Design, an interior design practice that is redefining approaches to affordable housing. Addressing the class of 2020, Sandow said, “You are all graduating during a once-in-a-lifetime period in the world…a pivotal time for the design industry. …As a designer, your job is going to be to interpret how these shifts will change our lives.” Weatherspoon told the graduates, “Our industry needs you: change agents, diverse voices, empathetic leaders…. You have the agency of choice.

Know you have chosen a path that can and will impact people’s lives for generations to come.”

Two student speakers, Supasara Rungruangrattanagul ’21 (BFA) and Dahiana Peña Calcagno ’21 (MFA1), spoke on behalf of their graduating classes. “NYSID is a family,” said Rungruangrattanagul. “Never have I been somewhere where everyone supports each other’s goals the way they do at NYSID.” Added Peña Calcagno, “You have all shown me, and each other, the value of working collectively to build each other up, and that there are no limits to what we can do in a work-from-home setting.” ·

SUPASARA RUNGRUANGRATTANAGUL

DAHIANA PEÑA CALCAGNO

DAVID SPROULS

ELLEN FISHER

ELLEN KRAVET

SHANNON LEDDY

TATIANA TOSHIMITSU

VIOLETTE PHOENIX

DANIELLE TODD

CIELO CORTES

CRYSTAL PICKAR

SONALIKA NAIR

SARA HERRERA GARCIA

DANIELA RUTIGILANO

NYSID 2020/21 ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNERS

One of the most moving parts of the commencement ceremony consisted of recordings of Dean/Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher surprising faculty and students with news of their achievement awards. The awards follow: The Breger Faculty Achievement Award Shannon Leddy The Chairman’s Award Tatiana Toshimitsu (BFA) Violette Phoenix (née Chartock) (MFA1) Danielle Todd (MFA2) Ana Blanc Verna Award for Excellence in Interior Design Cielo Cortes (BFA) The Alumni Award for Service to the College Crystal Pickar (MFA1) Sonalika Nair (MFA1) The Robert Herring Travel Prize Sara Herrera Garcia (BFA) Daniela Rutigilano (MFA1)

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 33

COMMENCEMENT 2021 Honorary Doctorate Recipients Adam Sandow and Kia Weatherspoon Shared Advice on Designing for this Unique Historical Moment with the Class of 2021

“ Approach every obstacle through

the lens of creativity and innovation.”

— ADAM SANDOW, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient

“ Our craft requires that we design for all people… Our profession should have a purpose.”

— KIA WEATHERSPOON, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient On May 27, 2021, for the second time in its 105-year history, NYSID held its commencement ceremony virtually after a period of challenge and change brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some graduates participated from afar; some from nearby. The themes of the day were creativity in the face of our society’s greatest problems and designing for the realities of a world altered by the pandemic. The commencement experience consisted of a live stream of the ceremony interspersed with prerecorded elements, a Zoom viewing party that enabled graduates to chat with each other and their instructors, and a virtual gallery of student thesis projects. Ellen Kravet, chair of NYSID’s Board of Trustees, said, “The pandemic changed the way people live and work, the way they want to travel, how students learn, and how healthcare is delivered…. It is you who will guide us into this new era of opportunity.”

President Sprouls conferred honorary doctorates upon entrepreneur Adam Sandow, founder & chairman of SANDOW Companies and founder and CEO of Material

Bank, and Kia Weatherspoon, a well-known design equity advocate and president of Determined by Design, an interior design practice that is redefining approaches to affordable housing. Addressing the class of 2020, Sandow said, “You are all graduating during a once-in-a-lifetime period in the world…a pivotal time for the design industry. …As a designer, your job is going to be to interpret how these shifts will change our lives.” Weatherspoon told the graduates, “Our industry needs you: change agents, diverse voices, empathetic leaders…. You have the agency of choice.

Know you have chosen a path that can and will impact people’s lives for generations to come.”

Two student speakers, Supasara Rungruangrattanagul ’21 (BFA) and Dahiana Peña Calcagno ’21 (MFA1), spoke on behalf of their graduating classes. “NYSID is a family,” said Rungruangrattanagul. “Never have I been somewhere where everyone supports each other’s goals the way they do at NYSID.” Added Peña Calcagno, “You have all shown me, and each other, the value of working collectively to build each other up, and that there are no limits to what we can do in a work-from-home setting.” ·

SUPASARA RUNGRUANGRATTANAGUL

DAHIANA PEÑA CALCAGNO

DAVID SPROULS

ELLEN FISHER

ELLEN KRAVET

SHANNON LEDDY

TATIANA TOSHIMITSU

VIOLETTE PHOENIX

DANIELLE TODD

CIELO CORTES

CRYSTAL PICKAR

SONALIKA NAIR

SARA HERRERA GARCIA

DANIELA RUTIGILANO

NYSID 2020/21 ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNERS

One of the most moving parts of the commencement ceremony consisted of recordings of Dean/Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher surprising faculty and students with news of their achievement awards. The awards follow: The Breger Faculty Achievement Award Shannon Leddy The Chairman’s Award Tatiana Toshimitsu (BFA) Violette Phoenix (née Chartock) (MFA1) Danielle Todd (MFA2) Ana Blanc Verna Award for Excellence in Interior Design Cielo Cortes (BFA) The Alumni Award for Service to the College Crystal Pickar (MFA1) Sonalika Nair (MFA1) The Robert Herring Travel Prize Sara Herrera Garcia (BFA) Daniela Rutigilano (MFA1)

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

LAYOUT / New and Notable at NYSID

FALL 2021 | 35

Steelcase Social Innovation Fellowship & Pipeline to Design

NYSID will be bringing continuing education straight to the designers by opening a new space within the New York Design Center, the city’s time-honored resource for fine furnishings.

“NYSID@NYDC” will be an institute for interior design education and professional studies that showcases NYSID’s commitment to continuing education in interior design by offering a lecture series, interactive workshops, field coaching, and studio classes. The space will also feature a studio for recording creative content, podcasts, and more. None of this would have been possible without the help and guidance of NYSID trustee James Druckman, president and CEO of the New York Design Center. The space is expected to open in spring, 2022.

NYSID’s Dean/Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ellen Fisher, says, “There’s a crisis in design practice today: students from underrepresented and/or underserved communities often do not pursue a career in interior design because they may be unfamiliar with the field, and do not see themselves included in the design profession.

Our communities and clients suffer because important viewpoints are missing from the design process.”

Dean Fisher saw an opportunity to do something about the lack of equitable access to design education.

She applied for Steelcase’s Social Innovation Fellowship, working with Interim Director of Graduate Studies Barbara Weinreich to craft a proposal called “Pipeline to Design,” which won the fellowship for NYSID. The fellowship was awarded through a jury of industry

NYSID Awards Its First Diversity Scholarship to Chazzten Pettiford



NYSID@NYDC

The New York School of Interior Design awarded the first scholarship from its newly formed diversity scholarship fund last fall, thanks to the generosity of the fund’s inaugural corporate sponsor, Holland & Sherry.

Says Daniel Waldron, vice president of Interiors at Holland & Sherry, “An array of perspective is what will lead interior and textile design into our next era of originality.” The recipient is Chazzten Pettiford ’22 (MFA1), a former advertising director who is finally realizing her childhood dream of becoming an interior designer. “The more diversity we have, the more we can change how interior design is seen and practiced,” says Pettiford.

Alexa Hampton & Andrew Oyden Offer Advice on Interior Design’s “DesignTV” NYSID trustee Alexa Hampton and Andrew Oyen doled out sage career advice in an Interior Design’s “DesignTV” interview, with Interior Design Editor-in-Chief Cindy Allen, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient, on behalf of the College. Their interview on the topic of 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Career was insightful and entertaining, and garnered 3.9 thousand views and counting. The pair of superstar designers generously offered to participate in a live Q&A for the NYSID community following a special viewing, and 75 members of our community took advantage of this opportunity.

leaders and Steelcase’s Social Innovation Lab, which aims to create more equity in education by empowering changemakers. Steelcase provided NYSID with $5,000 to create a pilot program through the College’s Pre-college program.

Starting with a strategic partnership with the YWCA of NYC, NYSID offered its Pre-college Intro to Interior Design course to the young women of the Y. After participating in the regular NYSID two week Pre-college, the YWCA students in the Pipeline for Design cohort continued for another week, working on a design project for the Y’s Family Resource Center, its NYC headquarters.

For related news on the Kravet family’s multi-year commitment to send students from Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club to NYSID Pre-college, see the giving section.

STAFF, FACULTY & CURRICULUM

New Course: Frontiers of Sustainable Interior Environments David Bergman, director of NYSID’s Master of Professional Studies in Sustainable Interior Environments, introduced a new and innovative course to the program over the summer. It centered on bringing some of the most cutting-edge experts in sustainability and related fields into the classroom for guest lectures that informed student research. Guests included Caitlin Southwick, executive director of Ki Culture, Eric Corey Freed, senior VP of CannonDesign, Jennifer Cooper, chief commercial officer at International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), Mandy Lee, program manager for centering equity in the sustainable building sector at NAACP, and Kia Weatherspoon, design equity advocate and founder, Determined by Design, and many other leaders in the field. Bergman says, “The students’ research was impressive. The plan is to assemble a few semesters of the students’ findings into a resource for the industry.” This course will be offered again in summer 2022.

Laura Catlan, NYSID’s New Director of External Relations

Sacsha Flowers, NYSID’s New Career Services & Internship Coordinator

Laura Catlan has taken the helm of NYSID’s External Relations Department. Catlan, who has worked with NYSID for several years as a marketing communications consultant, brings her experience as a former director of enrollment communications for Adelphi University, and VP, account director at Grey NY advertising agency to the table. If you’re interested in media or content partnerships with NYSID, reach out to her at LCatlan@NYSID.edu.

Sacsha Flowers, a former fashion designer who worked as an alumni career advisor at The New School, a student success advisor at Parsons School of Design, and a creative talent manager at Alexander Wang Inc., has come on board as career services and internship coordinator at NYSID. She says, “I speak the language of both creatives and corporate hiring departments.”

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

LAYOUT / New and Notable at NYSID

FALL 2021 | 35

Steelcase Social Innovation Fellowship & Pipeline to Design

NYSID will be bringing continuing education straight to the designers by opening a new space within the New York Design Center, the city’s time-honored resource for fine furnishings.

“NYSID@NYDC” will be an institute for interior design education and professional studies that showcases NYSID’s commitment to continuing education in interior design by offering a lecture series, interactive workshops, field coaching, and studio classes. The space will also feature a studio for recording creative content, podcasts, and more. None of this would have been possible without the help and guidance of NYSID trustee James Druckman, president and CEO of the New York Design Center. The space is expected to open in spring, 2022.

NYSID’s Dean/Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ellen Fisher, says, “There’s a crisis in design practice today: students from underrepresented and/or underserved communities often do not pursue a career in interior design because they may be unfamiliar with the field, and do not see themselves included in the design profession.

Our communities and clients suffer because important viewpoints are missing from the design process.”

Dean Fisher saw an opportunity to do something about the lack of equitable access to design education.

She applied for Steelcase’s Social Innovation Fellowship, working with Interim Director of Graduate Studies Barbara Weinreich to craft a proposal called “Pipeline to Design,” which won the fellowship for NYSID. The fellowship was awarded through a jury of industry

NYSID Awards Its First Diversity Scholarship to Chazzten Pettiford



NYSID@NYDC

The New York School of Interior Design awarded the first scholarship from its newly formed diversity scholarship fund last fall, thanks to the generosity of the fund’s inaugural corporate sponsor, Holland & Sherry.

Says Daniel Waldron, vice president of Interiors at Holland & Sherry, “An array of perspective is what will lead interior and textile design into our next era of originality.” The recipient is Chazzten Pettiford ’22 (MFA1), a former advertising director who is finally realizing her childhood dream of becoming an interior designer. “The more diversity we have, the more we can change how interior design is seen and practiced,” says Pettiford.

Alexa Hampton & Andrew Oyden Offer Advice on Interior Design’s “DesignTV” NYSID trustee Alexa Hampton and Andrew Oyen doled out sage career advice in an Interior Design’s “DesignTV” interview, with Interior Design Editor-in-Chief Cindy Allen, NYSID honorary doctorate recipient, on behalf of the College. Their interview on the topic of 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Career was insightful and entertaining, and garnered 3.9 thousand views and counting. The pair of superstar designers generously offered to participate in a live Q&A for the NYSID community following a special viewing, and 75 members of our community took advantage of this opportunity.

leaders and Steelcase’s Social Innovation Lab, which aims to create more equity in education by empowering changemakers. Steelcase provided NYSID with $5,000 to create a pilot program through the College’s Pre-college program.

Starting with a strategic partnership with the YWCA of NYC, NYSID offered its Pre-college Intro to Interior Design course to the young women of the Y. After participating in the regular NYSID two week Pre-college, the YWCA students in the Pipeline for Design cohort continued for another week, working on a design project for the Y’s Family Resource Center, its NYC headquarters.

For related news on the Kravet family’s multi-year commitment to send students from Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club to NYSID Pre-college, see the giving section.

STAFF, FACULTY & CURRICULUM

New Course: Frontiers of Sustainable Interior Environments David Bergman, director of NYSID’s Master of Professional Studies in Sustainable Interior Environments, introduced a new and innovative course to the program over the summer. It centered on bringing some of the most cutting-edge experts in sustainability and related fields into the classroom for guest lectures that informed student research. Guests included Caitlin Southwick, executive director of Ki Culture, Eric Corey Freed, senior VP of CannonDesign, Jennifer Cooper, chief commercial officer at International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), Mandy Lee, program manager for centering equity in the sustainable building sector at NAACP, and Kia Weatherspoon, design equity advocate and founder, Determined by Design, and many other leaders in the field. Bergman says, “The students’ research was impressive. The plan is to assemble a few semesters of the students’ findings into a resource for the industry.” This course will be offered again in summer 2022.

Laura Catlan, NYSID’s New Director of External Relations

Sacsha Flowers, NYSID’s New Career Services & Internship Coordinator

Laura Catlan has taken the helm of NYSID’s External Relations Department. Catlan, who has worked with NYSID for several years as a marketing communications consultant, brings her experience as a former director of enrollment communications for Adelphi University, and VP, account director at Grey NY advertising agency to the table. If you’re interested in media or content partnerships with NYSID, reach out to her at LCatlan@NYSID.edu.

Sacsha Flowers, a former fashion designer who worked as an alumni career advisor at The New School, a student success advisor at Parsons School of Design, and a creative talent manager at Alexander Wang Inc., has come on board as career services and internship coordinator at NYSID. She says, “I speak the language of both creatives and corporate hiring departments.”

36 | ATELIER MAGAZINE



LAYOUT

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

ADMINISTRATION

FALL 2021 | 37

Three NYSID Graduate Students Win IDA Awards

Barbara Weinreich Becomes Acting Interim Director of Graduate Studies Barbara Lowenthal has retired from her duties as associate dean of NYSID (see A Design Educator’s Impact). Barbara Weinreich, formerly the director of undergraduate studies, has become the acting interim director of graduate studies.

Barbara Weinreich



Rocio Casabella ’21

STUDENTS

The Kaleidoscope Project’s Designers Mentor NYSID Students During the winter/spring 2021 semester, four NYSID students were mentored by designers involved in the Kaleidoscope Project, a showhouse that showcased the work of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) designers. The task at hand was the transformation of the Cornell Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, which opened to the public for tours in May and June of 2021. After sending applications to the project’s co-founders, Amy Lynn Schwartzbard and Patti Carpenter, students Paulina Francisco (MPSS) worked with Linda Hayslett of LH Designs; student Felicia Gordon (MFA1) worked with Rasheeda Gray of Gray Space Interiors; student Shruti Kashikar (MFA1) worked with Virginia Toledo of Toledo Geller; and student Rishae Rucker (MFA1) worked with Everick Brown and Lisa Walker Brown of everick brown design. Rucker worked virtually as a support for Brown, and also traveled to Massachusetts to assist Schwartzbard in the lead up to the showhouse. Rucker says of the experience, “This event showed me the richness and greatness of diversity in the history of American design. It gave me role models to look up to. It’s so important to have mentors, and exposure to their work and process convinced me I can be successful in interior design.” Says Kashikar, who went on to work for Virgina Toledo at Toledo Geller as an intern, “This experience gave me permission to express myself and my culture as a designer.” The proceeds from Kaleidoscope ticket sales will go to scholarships for BIPOC students at design schools, and NYSID is one of the institutions that will receive funding. Another hospitality design project is in the works from the Kaleidoscope Project. Schwartzbard says, “We are doing this for the next generation of our creatives so there will be more opportunities for people of color to have careers of passion and artistry.”

TOP: RISHAE RUCKER. MIDDLE: ”THE KUTANA ROOM” BY EVERICK BROWN DESIGN. BOTTOM: SHRUTI KASHIKAR (RIGHT) WITH HER MENTOR AND OTHER DESIGNERS. PHOTOS: THE KALEIDOSCOPE PROJECT

Violette Phoenix ’21

Fei Wang ’20

Three NYSID students won 2020 International Design Awards (IDA).

The IDA celebrates exceptional design works and promotes emerging talent in architecture, interior design, product design, graphic design, and fashion design. Rocio Casabella ’21 (MFA2), won a silver medal in the museum, exhibits, pavilions, and exhibitions category for Museum of Mechanical Toys, a project that proposes an innovative display system for museums.

Violette Phoenix (née Chartock) ’21 (MFA1) won a silver medal in the retail, shop, department store, and mall category for Unwind Retail Experience, which explores the concept of retail therapy. Fei Wang ’20 (MFA2) won a gold medal in the same category for Flowing Fabric, a store designed for the Danish textiles brand Kvadrat that pushes the boundaries of traditional textile showrooms. ·

36 | ATELIER MAGAZINE



LAYOUT

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

ADMINISTRATION

FALL 2021 | 37

Three NYSID Graduate Students Win IDA Awards

Barbara Weinreich Becomes Acting Interim Director of Graduate Studies Barbara Lowenthal has retired from her duties as associate dean of NYSID (see A Design Educator’s Impact). Barbara Weinreich, formerly the director of undergraduate studies, has become the acting interim director of graduate studies.

Barbara Weinreich



Rocio Casabella ’21

STUDENTS

The Kaleidoscope Project’s Designers Mentor NYSID Students During the winter/spring 2021 semester, four NYSID students were mentored by designers involved in the Kaleidoscope Project, a showhouse that showcased the work of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) designers. The task at hand was the transformation of the Cornell Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, which opened to the public for tours in May and June of 2021. After sending applications to the project’s co-founders, Amy Lynn Schwartzbard and Patti Carpenter, students Paulina Francisco (MPSS) worked with Linda Hayslett of LH Designs; student Felicia Gordon (MFA1) worked with Rasheeda Gray of Gray Space Interiors; student Shruti Kashikar (MFA1) worked with Virginia Toledo of Toledo Geller; and student Rishae Rucker (MFA1) worked with Everick Brown and Lisa Walker Brown of everick brown design. Rucker worked virtually as a support for Brown, and also traveled to Massachusetts to assist Schwartzbard in the lead up to the showhouse. Rucker says of the experience, “This event showed me the richness and greatness of diversity in the history of American design. It gave me role models to look up to. It’s so important to have mentors, and exposure to their work and process convinced me I can be successful in interior design.” Says Kashikar, who went on to work for Virgina Toledo at Toledo Geller as an intern, “This experience gave me permission to express myself and my culture as a designer.” The proceeds from Kaleidoscope ticket sales will go to scholarships for BIPOC students at design schools, and NYSID is one of the institutions that will receive funding. Another hospitality design project is in the works from the Kaleidoscope Project. Schwartzbard says, “We are doing this for the next generation of our creatives so there will be more opportunities for people of color to have careers of passion and artistry.”

TOP: RISHAE RUCKER. MIDDLE: ”THE KUTANA ROOM” BY EVERICK BROWN DESIGN. BOTTOM: SHRUTI KASHIKAR (RIGHT) WITH HER MENTOR AND OTHER DESIGNERS. PHOTOS: THE KALEIDOSCOPE PROJECT

Violette Phoenix ’21

Fei Wang ’20

Three NYSID students won 2020 International Design Awards (IDA).

The IDA celebrates exceptional design works and promotes emerging talent in architecture, interior design, product design, graphic design, and fashion design. Rocio Casabella ’21 (MFA2), won a silver medal in the museum, exhibits, pavilions, and exhibitions category for Museum of Mechanical Toys, a project that proposes an innovative display system for museums.

Violette Phoenix (née Chartock) ’21 (MFA1) won a silver medal in the retail, shop, department store, and mall category for Unwind Retail Experience, which explores the concept of retail therapy. Fei Wang ’20 (MFA2) won a gold medal in the same category for Flowing Fabric, a store designed for the Danish textiles brand Kvadrat that pushes the boundaries of traditional textile showrooms. ·

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 39

PORTFOLIO / Class of 2021 Award Winners The College awarded the students whose thesis projects are featured on these pages the Chairman’s Award for their overall performance at NYSID and, in one case, the Ana Blanc Verna Award for Excellence in Interior Design, an award given to a graduating BFA student who demonstrated unique creative vision.

A Yearlong Journey At NYSID, thesis and capstone projects challenge students to brainstorm, form a guiding concept, conduct research on real communities and building sites, seek out case studies, and synthesize all they have learned. This yearlong journey ends with a presentation to a jury of faculty and industry professionals. The thesis challenges students to create hypothetical designs that solve real-world problems.

WATCH AWARD WINNERS ON YOUTUBE.COM/C/NYSIDNYC

“ I wanted people to see

“ By supporting local artists,

the burned walls made of stones from colonial times, and talk about what happened.”

musicians, and artisans while showcasing the nation’s multicultural heritage, this cultural destination will foster an immersive educational experience for tourists and locals alike.”

TATIANA TOSHIMITSU

DANIELLE TODD

“ Since the ideal balance

between being social and alone varies from person to person, the club provides a variety of space types so people can move between areas, depending on their needs.”

“ I envisioned a hotel

that could respond to the city’s needs in its time of crisis and satisfy the requirements of both healthcare and hospitality in one flexible space.”

CIELO CORTES

VIOLETTE PHOENIX

TOP: RENDERED IMAGE OF THE GIFT SHOP IN “CREATIVE YAAD” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER DANIELLE TODD ’20 (MFA-2).

BOTTOM: OVERHEAD PERSPECTIVE OF “FLOW SOCIAL WELLNESS CLUB” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER VIOLETTE PHOENIX ’20 (MFA-1).

TOP: RENDERED IMAGE OF AN EXHIBIT SPACE IN ”MUSEU NACIONAL” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER TATIANA TOSHIMITSU ’20 (BFA).

BOTTOM: RENDERED IMAGE OF A RECEPTION AREA WIDE ENOUGH TO ACCOMODATE AMBULANCES IN “THE KIOUS KELLY H+ HOTEL”

BY ANA BLANC VERNA AWARD WINNER CIELO CORTES ’20 (BFA).

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 39

PORTFOLIO / Class of 2021 Award Winners The College awarded the students whose thesis projects are featured on these pages the Chairman’s Award for their overall performance at NYSID and, in one case, the Ana Blanc Verna Award for Excellence in Interior Design, an award given to a graduating BFA student who demonstrated unique creative vision.

A Yearlong Journey At NYSID, thesis and capstone projects challenge students to brainstorm, form a guiding concept, conduct research on real communities and building sites, seek out case studies, and synthesize all they have learned. This yearlong journey ends with a presentation to a jury of faculty and industry professionals. The thesis challenges students to create hypothetical designs that solve real-world problems.

WATCH AWARD WINNERS ON YOUTUBE.COM/C/NYSIDNYC

“ I wanted people to see

“ By supporting local artists,

the burned walls made of stones from colonial times, and talk about what happened.”

musicians, and artisans while showcasing the nation’s multicultural heritage, this cultural destination will foster an immersive educational experience for tourists and locals alike.”

TATIANA TOSHIMITSU

DANIELLE TODD

“ Since the ideal balance

between being social and alone varies from person to person, the club provides a variety of space types so people can move between areas, depending on their needs.”

“ I envisioned a hotel

that could respond to the city’s needs in its time of crisis and satisfy the requirements of both healthcare and hospitality in one flexible space.”

CIELO CORTES

VIOLETTE PHOENIX

TOP: RENDERED IMAGE OF THE GIFT SHOP IN “CREATIVE YAAD” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER DANIELLE TODD ’20 (MFA-2).

BOTTOM: OVERHEAD PERSPECTIVE OF “FLOW SOCIAL WELLNESS CLUB” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER VIOLETTE PHOENIX ’20 (MFA-1).

TOP: RENDERED IMAGE OF AN EXHIBIT SPACE IN ”MUSEU NACIONAL” BY CHAIRMAN’S AWARD WINNER TATIANA TOSHIMITSU ’20 (BFA).

BOTTOM: RENDERED IMAGE OF A RECEPTION AREA WIDE ENOUGH TO ACCOMODATE AMBULANCES IN “THE KIOUS KELLY H+ HOTEL”

BY ANA BLANC VERNA AWARD WINNER CIELO CORTES ’20 (BFA).

40 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

PORTFOLIO

Danielle Todd

Chairman’s Award, Master of Fine Arts (Post-Professional)

Project: Creative Yaad

Instructor: Stefanie Werner, Mentor: Dincer Savaskan

When Danielle Todd set out to research her thesis, her imagination was drawn back to her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. She says, “The economy of Kingston is struggling. My city has one of the largest and most beautiful natural harbors in the world, but the waterfront is underutilized. There was a fire and that area has never been properly fixed.” Her vision was to combine a hotel with a cultural center in a destination intended to revitalize the area of Downtown Kingston, promote economic growth and job creation, attract local and international investment, and showcase local artists. She chose an abandoned ice factory in the flow of the airport, waterfront, and a local market as her site. Inspired by the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett-Coverley, she set out to give new meaning to concepts once associated with oppression. The Jamaican “Bandana” fabric, once a mark of enslavement and now a symbol of Jamaican national pride, figures heavily in her design. She even used the pattern of the fabric to come up with the grid for her floor plan and partitions. She says, “By supporting local artists, musicians, and artisans while showcasing the nation’s multicultural heritage, this cultural destination will foster an immersive educational experience for tourists and locals alike.”

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Violette Phoenix (née Chartock)

FALL 2021 | 41

Chairman’s Award, Master of Fine Arts (Professional)

Project: “Flow” Social Wellness Club Violette Phoenix’s thesis concept, set in an existing building in downtown LA, is a hybrid social and wellness club, an idea for the post-COVID era. Her intended users are young, urban professionals, many of whom work long hours in front of computer screens, whose lifestyles leave them feeling isolated and inactive. The club she designed addresses all facets of health: physical, mental, social, emotional, and nutritional. Phoenix’s research showed her people need to come together in three-dimensional space, but that a onesize-fits-all approach to social interaction is too reductive. “Since the ideal balance between being social and alone varies from person to person, the club provides a variety of space types so people can move between areas, depending on their needs,” she says. “The design concept was inspired by the traditional Chinese yin-yang symbol, which is based on the sun’s changing shadows throughout the year and fluctuations in energy. The concept of yin-yang encapsulates how seemingly opposite forces are complementary and interconnected.

A sine curve became the visual representation of this concept in my project.” Phoenix used the sine curve to create and connect moments of energetic interaction, and of calm retreat, within the space. She says, “It took many iterations to figure out how to incorporate a sine curve into the floor plan, while still creating a seamless user experience. My instructor, Terry Kleinberg, was instrumental in helping me resolve this.”

Instructor: Terry Kleinberg

40 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

PORTFOLIO

Danielle Todd

Chairman’s Award, Master of Fine Arts (Post-Professional)

Project: Creative Yaad

Instructor: Stefanie Werner, Mentor: Dincer Savaskan

When Danielle Todd set out to research her thesis, her imagination was drawn back to her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. She says, “The economy of Kingston is struggling. My city has one of the largest and most beautiful natural harbors in the world, but the waterfront is underutilized. There was a fire and that area has never been properly fixed.” Her vision was to combine a hotel with a cultural center in a destination intended to revitalize the area of Downtown Kingston, promote economic growth and job creation, attract local and international investment, and showcase local artists. She chose an abandoned ice factory in the flow of the airport, waterfront, and a local market as her site. Inspired by the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett-Coverley, she set out to give new meaning to concepts once associated with oppression. The Jamaican “Bandana” fabric, once a mark of enslavement and now a symbol of Jamaican national pride, figures heavily in her design. She even used the pattern of the fabric to come up with the grid for her floor plan and partitions. She says, “By supporting local artists, musicians, and artisans while showcasing the nation’s multicultural heritage, this cultural destination will foster an immersive educational experience for tourists and locals alike.”

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Violette Phoenix (née Chartock)

FALL 2021 | 41

Chairman’s Award, Master of Fine Arts (Professional)

Project: “Flow” Social Wellness Club Violette Phoenix’s thesis concept, set in an existing building in downtown LA, is a hybrid social and wellness club, an idea for the post-COVID era. Her intended users are young, urban professionals, many of whom work long hours in front of computer screens, whose lifestyles leave them feeling isolated and inactive. The club she designed addresses all facets of health: physical, mental, social, emotional, and nutritional. Phoenix’s research showed her people need to come together in three-dimensional space, but that a onesize-fits-all approach to social interaction is too reductive. “Since the ideal balance between being social and alone varies from person to person, the club provides a variety of space types so people can move between areas, depending on their needs,” she says. “The design concept was inspired by the traditional Chinese yin-yang symbol, which is based on the sun’s changing shadows throughout the year and fluctuations in energy. The concept of yin-yang encapsulates how seemingly opposite forces are complementary and interconnected.

A sine curve became the visual representation of this concept in my project.” Phoenix used the sine curve to create and connect moments of energetic interaction, and of calm retreat, within the space. She says, “It took many iterations to figure out how to incorporate a sine curve into the floor plan, while still creating a seamless user experience. My instructor, Terry Kleinberg, was instrumental in helping me resolve this.”

Instructor: Terry Kleinberg

42 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

Tatiana Toshimitsu Project: Museu Nacional When Tatiana Toshimitsu was a small child growing up in Rio, her family often took her to the National Museum of Brazil. The building made a lasting impression. When she learned that her beloved “Museu Nacional” was almost entirely destroyed by a fire in 2018, she cried. She knew at that moment that a reimagining of the museum of her childhood would be the subject of her NYSID thesis. “Museu Nacional is now a shell of what it once was,” she says. “The insides of the building were destroyed, including the ceilings and rooftop as well as its vast collection.”

The building was originally the residence of the Portuguese royal family, after they left Portugal as a result of Napoleon’s invasions.

Toshimitsu’s goal for this ruin-restoration project was to express the rich history of the building by contrasting the neoclassical with the contemporary. She set the original architecture against a modern, curved glass roof, which was inspired by the shape of Rio’s famous Sugarloaf Mountain. As the fire that ravaged Museu Nacional is widely acknowledged to have been a result of negligence, she decided to preserve the burned walls in her lobby design. She says, “The building is part of the exhibit. I wanted people to see the burned walls made of stones from colonial times, and talk about what happened.”

PORTFOLIO

Chairman’s Award, Bachelor of Fine Arts Instructor: Lissette Carrera

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 43

42 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

Tatiana Toshimitsu Project: Museu Nacional When Tatiana Toshimitsu was a small child growing up in Rio, her family often took her to the National Museum of Brazil. The building made a lasting impression. When she learned that her beloved “Museu Nacional” was almost entirely destroyed by a fire in 2018, she cried. She knew at that moment that a reimagining of the museum of her childhood would be the subject of her NYSID thesis. “Museu Nacional is now a shell of what it once was,” she says. “The insides of the building were destroyed, including the ceilings and rooftop as well as its vast collection.”

The building was originally the residence of the Portuguese royal family, after they left Portugal as a result of Napoleon’s invasions.

Toshimitsu’s goal for this ruin-restoration project was to express the rich history of the building by contrasting the neoclassical with the contemporary. She set the original architecture against a modern, curved glass roof, which was inspired by the shape of Rio’s famous Sugarloaf Mountain. As the fire that ravaged Museu Nacional is widely acknowledged to have been a result of negligence, she decided to preserve the burned walls in her lobby design. She says, “The building is part of the exhibit. I wanted people to see the burned walls made of stones from colonial times, and talk about what happened.”

PORTFOLIO

Chairman’s Award, Bachelor of Fine Arts Instructor: Lissette Carrera

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 43

44 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

PORTFOLIO

Cielo Cortes

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 45

Ana Blanc Verna Award, Bachelor of Fine Arts

Project: The Kious Kelly H+ Hotel

Instructor: Robert Dadras

Cielo Cortes’ original thesis idea was a remodeling of Terminal A at LaGuardia Airport, where the Marine Air Terminal landmark building is located. But when COVID-19 shut down New York City in the spring of 2020, and city officials scrambled to erect temporary healthcare facilities for patients, she knew her project had to mean something more. Through her research, and inspired by the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s Hospitality for Hope Initiative, she determined that LaGuardia Airport could benefit from a new hospitality design concept that would address emerging healthcare needs. To honor the many sacrifices of frontline workers, she named her project after Kious Kelly, an assistant nurse manager in Manhattan who helped COVID-19 patients and later became the city’s first healthcare worker to die from the virus. She incorporated the signature circular footprint of the original landmark building to evoke a sense of symmetry, movement, and continuity, and prioritized biophilic approaches that improve human health and well-being.

The space is comfortable, functional, and adaptable with corridors wide enough to accommodate multiple stretchers, and with two back emergency entrances for ambulance access. Every room is ADA compliant with the capacity for oxygen and other medical necessities.

Cortes envisioned a hotel that could respond to the city’s needs in its time of crisis and satisfy the requirements of both healthcare and hospitality in one flexible space. ·

KIOUS KELLY H+ HOTEL La Guardia Airport - NYC In light of current global public health concerns, it is appropriate to re-imagine hospitality spaces to be more responsive in our times of need. Kious Kelly H+ Hotel is a space where hospitality and healthcare are merged in one place.

“The Kious Kelly H+ Hotel is named to honor Kious Kelly and other New Yorkers like him. He was an assistant nurse manager in Manhattan who helped COVID-19 patients and then became the city’s rst health care wor er to die from the virus.

GUEST ROOMS Behind each bed on either side, the counters are equipped with a built-in oxygen supply system and there is a desk in the middle. There is enough space behind the counters to lay down a yoga mat and work out with the iPad provided. A TV-lift is inside the cabinet at the front of the bed. All bathrooms are ADA compliant.

FLOOR PLAN First Level

H+ HOTEL RECEPTION

H+ HOTEL SECOND LEVEL HALLWAY Views to the central garden

FIRST LEVEL GALLERY - SITTING AREA

Located next to the reception, this area showcases pictures of the Marine Air Terminal of the 1940s.

The circular shape of the building embraces the concept of movement. The opening in the center allows light and harvested water to fall through a central garden. On each floor the spacious hallways overlook the central courtyard, and on the sides of each nurse station there are green walls that reinforce the concept of biophilia. The elevators and

44 | ATELIER MAGAZINE

PORTFOLIO

Cielo Cortes

NEW YORK SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN

FALL 2021 | 45

Ana Blanc Verna Award, Bachelor of Fine Arts

Project: The Kious Kelly H+ Hotel

Instructor: Robert Dadras

Cielo Cortes’ original thesis idea was a remodeling of Terminal A at LaGuardia Airport, where the Marine Air Terminal landmark building is located. But when COVID-19 shut down New York City in the spring of 2020, and city officials scrambled to erect temporary healthcare facilities for patients, she knew her project had to mean something more. Through her research, and inspired by the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s Hospitality for Hope Initiative, she determined that LaGuardia Airport could benefit from a new hospitality design concept that would address emerging healthcare needs. To honor the many sacrifices of frontline workers, she named her project after Kious Kelly, an assistant nurse manager in Manhattan who helped COVID-19 patients and later became the city’s first healthcare worker to die from the virus. She incorporated the signature circular footprint of the original landmark building to evoke a sense of symmetry, movement, and continuity, and prioritized biophilic approaches that improve human health and well-being.

The space is comfortable, functional, and adaptable with corridors wide enough to accommodate multiple stretchers, and with two back emergency entrances for ambulance access. Every room is ADA compliant with the capacity for oxygen and other medical necessities.

Cortes envisioned a hotel that could respond to the city’s needs in its time of crisis and satisfy the requirements of both healthcare and hospitality in one flexible space. ·

KIOUS KELLY H+ HOTEL La Guardia Airport - NYC In light of current global public health concerns, it is appropriate to re-imagine hospitality spaces to be more responsive in our times of need. Kious Kelly H+ Hotel is a space where hospitality and healthcare are merged in one place.

“The Kious Kelly H+ Hotel is named to honor Kious Kelly and other New Yorkers like him. He was an assistant nurse manager in Manhattan who helped COVID-19 patients and then became the city’s rst health care wor er to die from the virus.

GUEST ROOMS Behind each bed on either side, the counters are equipped with a built-in oxygen supply system and there is a desk in the middle. There is enough space behind the counters to lay down a yoga mat and work out with the iPad provided. A TV-lift is inside the cabinet at the front of the bed. All bathrooms are ADA compliant.

FLOOR PLAN First Level

H+ HOTEL RECEPTION

H+ HOTEL SECOND LEVEL HALLWAY Views to the central garden

FIRST LEVEL GALLERY - SITTING AREA

Located next to the reception, this area showcases pictures of the Marine Air Terminal of the 1940s.

The circular shape of the building embraces the concept of movement. The opening in the center allows light and harvested water to fall through a central garden. On each floor the spacious hallways overlook the central courtyard, and on the sides of each nurse station there are green walls that reinforce the concept of biophilia. The elevators and

IN MEMORIAM The NYSID Community Remembers Barry Lewis, Jeannie Bochette, and Art Gensler BARRY LEWIS Generations of NYSID alumni and faculty were saddened by the news that famed New York City architectural historian and former NYSID instructor Barry Lewis passed away on January 12, 2021, at the age of 75. Lewis was best known as the quintessential New York City historical and architectural walking tour guide. He co-hosted and co-created (with David Hartman) the TV special “A Walk Down 42nd Street,” which aired on the New York PBS station WNET in 1998. The special bloomed into a series that was shown on PBS stations throughout the country. Lewis had a deep expertise in European and American architectural history from the 18th to 20th centuries. In addition to lecturing at institutions such as the New York Historical Society, Lewis taught Modern Architecture & Design I and II at the New York School of Interior Design for 25 years. His courses were wildly popular, and he won NYSID’s William Breger Faculty Achievement Award for extraordinary teaching in 2001. “NYSID was lucky to have such a long affiliation with the NYC icon Barry Lewis,” says NYSID President David Sprouls. “It was our students who were the luckiest, having been taught by someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as he was.”

EMILY HAGOPIAN

JEANNIE BOCHETTE The NYSID community was saddened by the passing of Jeannie Bochette, the former marketing manager for business development of Steelcase and a member of NYSID’s Advisory Board for many years. Bochette died on January 16, 2021, at the age of 77.

Bochette was a force behind the professionalization of interior design through her advocacy for standards, legislation, and licensure in the industry. She was a key figure in the formation and development of IDLNY (Interior Designers for Legislation in New York) and an active member of NY11+, an organization dedicated to promoting public awareness of interior design education. “As a senior manager at Steelcase in New York City, Bochette provided meeting space and refreshments for NY11+ board meetings and student events, and hosted professional events that showcased awareness of the importance of legislation supporting licensure and other legislative initiatives,” says NYSID Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher. “Her advocacy made a difference to our profession, and to the design industry at large.”

ART GENSLER Art Gensler, the cofounder of the international architecture and interior design firm that bears his name, died on May 10, 2021, at the age of 85. This giant of the architecture world transformed Gensler from a boutique San Francisco-based firm into a company that has offices in 50 cities. The New York Times said of Art Gensler, “At a time when many architects overlooked interior design, Mr. Gensler made it a key component of his architectural practice. He said he designed spaces from the ‘inside out’…” Gensler spoke at NYSID’s commencement speech in 2014, when he received an honorary doctorate from the College.

Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Art Gensler was transformative because he created a company culture that emphasized the way interiors impact life and human experience, and that’s a tradition that continues at Gensler today, and is in line with NYSID’s mission.”

LEADERSHIP / Moving the College Forward BOARD OF TRUSTEES Ellen Kravet, Chairman David Sprouls, NYSID President Chesie Breen Jill H. Dienst James P. Druckman Cheryl S. Durst Susan Zises Green Alexa Hampton David Kleinberg Anne Korman Courtney R. McLeod Dennis Miller Betsey Ruprecht Brad Schneller David Scott Maria Spears Newell Turner Kelly M. Williams Eric Gering, Faculty Trustee Joanna L. Silver, Esq., General Counsel Elaine Wingate Conway, Trustee Emerita Inge Heckel, Trustee Emerita Patricia M. Sovern, Chairman Emeritus

ADVISORY BOARD Robin Klehr Avia Michael Bruno Kathleen M. Doyle Anne Eisenhower Ross J. Francis Mariette Himes Gomez Gerald A. Holbrook Thomas Jayne Wolfram Koeppe Charlotte Moss Barbara Ostrom Sylvia Owen Ann Pyne Peter Sallick Calvin Tsao Bunny Williams Vicente Wolf

ALUMNI COUNCIL Marie Aiello ’04 (AAS), President Court Whisman ’05 (AAS), Vice-President Ruth Burt ’88 (AAS) Lawrence Chabra ’09 (BFA) Allison Russell Davis ’05 (BFA) Krista Gurevich ’16 (MFA-1) Michael Harold ’10 (BFA) Faith Hoops ’18 (BFA) Michelle Jacobson ’18 (MPS-S) Don Kossar ’95 (BFA) Maisie Lee ’00 (BFA) Lawrence Levy ’05 (BFA) Drew McGukin ’10 (AAS) Valerie Mead ’00 (BFA) Charles Pavarini ’81 (BFA) George Marshall Peters ’08 (BFA) Ethel Rompilla ’84 (BFA) Linda Sclafani ’90 (BFA) Susan Thorn ’96 (AAS) Erin Wells ’04 (BFA)

The 1916 Society NYSID alumni, faculty members, and friends find planned giving a fulfilling way to be a part of the future of the College. Bequests allow for the creation of scholarships and awards that will help students for generations to come, or to recognize NYSID instructors. Others are inspired to provide resources for study in the library or studio, or for study abroad. Legacy donors like this make up the 1916 Society, named for the year NYSID was founded.

Contact Joy Cooper, Director of Development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

IN MEMORIAM The NYSID Community Remembers Barry Lewis, Jeannie Bochette, and Art Gensler BARRY LEWIS Generations of NYSID alumni and faculty were saddened by the news that famed New York City architectural historian and former NYSID instructor Barry Lewis passed away on January 12, 2021, at the age of 75. Lewis was best known as the quintessential New York City historical and architectural walking tour guide. He co-hosted and co-created (with David Hartman) the TV special “A Walk Down 42nd Street,” which aired on the New York PBS station WNET in 1998. The special bloomed into a series that was shown on PBS stations throughout the country. Lewis had a deep expertise in European and American architectural history from the 18th to 20th centuries. In addition to lecturing at institutions such as the New York Historical Society, Lewis taught Modern Architecture & Design I and II at the New York School of Interior Design for 25 years. His courses were wildly popular, and he won NYSID’s William Breger Faculty Achievement Award for extraordinary teaching in 2001. “NYSID was lucky to have such a long affiliation with the NYC icon Barry Lewis,” says NYSID President David Sprouls. “It was our students who were the luckiest, having been taught by someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as he was.”

EMILY HAGOPIAN

JEANNIE BOCHETTE The NYSID community was saddened by the passing of Jeannie Bochette, the former marketing manager for business development of Steelcase and a member of NYSID’s Advisory Board for many years. Bochette died on January 16, 2021, at the age of 77.

Bochette was a force behind the professionalization of interior design through her advocacy for standards, legislation, and licensure in the industry. She was a key figure in the formation and development of IDLNY (Interior Designers for Legislation in New York) and an active member of NY11+, an organization dedicated to promoting public awareness of interior design education. “As a senior manager at Steelcase in New York City, Bochette provided meeting space and refreshments for NY11+ board meetings and student events, and hosted professional events that showcased awareness of the importance of legislation supporting licensure and other legislative initiatives,” says NYSID Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher. “Her advocacy made a difference to our profession, and to the design industry at large.”

ART GENSLER Art Gensler, the cofounder of the international architecture and interior design firm that bears his name, died on May 10, 2021, at the age of 85. This giant of the architecture world transformed Gensler from a boutique San Francisco-based firm into a company that has offices in 50 cities. The New York Times said of Art Gensler, “At a time when many architects overlooked interior design, Mr. Gensler made it a key component of his architectural practice. He said he designed spaces from the ‘inside out’…” Gensler spoke at NYSID’s commencement speech in 2014, when he received an honorary doctorate from the College.

Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “Art Gensler was transformative because he created a company culture that emphasized the way interiors impact life and human experience, and that’s a tradition that continues at Gensler today, and is in line with NYSID’s mission.”

LEADERSHIP / Moving the College Forward BOARD OF TRUSTEES Ellen Kravet, Chairman David Sprouls, NYSID President Chesie Breen Jill H. Dienst James P. Druckman Cheryl S. Durst Susan Zises Green Alexa Hampton David Kleinberg Anne Korman Courtney R. McLeod Dennis Miller Betsey Ruprecht Brad Schneller David Scott Maria Spears Newell Turner Kelly M. Williams Eric Gering, Faculty Trustee Joanna L. Silver, Esq., General Counsel Elaine Wingate Conway, Trustee Emerita Inge Heckel, Trustee Emerita Patricia M. Sovern, Chairman Emeritus

ADVISORY BOARD Robin Klehr Avia Michael Bruno Kathleen M. Doyle Anne Eisenhower Ross J. Francis Mariette Himes Gomez Gerald A. Holbrook Thomas Jayne Wolfram Koeppe Charlotte Moss Barbara Ostrom Sylvia Owen Ann Pyne Peter Sallick Calvin Tsao Bunny Williams Vicente Wolf

ALUMNI COUNCIL Marie Aiello ’04 (AAS), President Court Whisman ’05 (AAS), Vice-President Ruth Burt ’88 (AAS) Lawrence Chabra ’09 (BFA) Allison Russell Davis ’05 (BFA) Krista Gurevich ’16 (MFA-1) Michael Harold ’10 (BFA) Faith Hoops ’18 (BFA) Michelle Jacobson ’18 (MPS-S) Don Kossar ’95 (BFA) Maisie Lee ’00 (BFA) Lawrence Levy ’05 (BFA) Drew McGukin ’10 (AAS) Valerie Mead ’00 (BFA) Charles Pavarini ’81 (BFA) George Marshall Peters ’08 (BFA) Ethel Rompilla ’84 (BFA) Linda Sclafani ’90 (BFA) Susan Thorn ’96 (AAS) Erin Wells ’04 (BFA)

The 1916 Society NYSID alumni, faculty members, and friends find planned giving a fulfilling way to be a part of the future of the College. Bequests allow for the creation of scholarships and awards that will help students for generations to come, or to recognize NYSID instructors. Others are inspired to provide resources for study in the library or studio, or for study abroad. Legacy donors like this make up the 1916 Society, named for the year NYSID was founded.

Contact Joy Cooper, Director of Development, at Giving@NYSID.edu.

NEXT AT NYSID / Mark Your Calendars SEPTEMBER 21

OCTOBER 8–9

Rooms with a Viewpoint by Mitchell Owens

Teaching Green

All are welcome to this virtual event. Renowned design journalist and author Mitchell Owens will discuss Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles’ Paris residence, which was thrillingly minimalized by Jean-Michel Frank in the 1920s.

MORE INFORMATION AT:

nysid.edu/institute-for-continuing-professional-studies SEPTEMBER 24

Career Services Workshop

Sacsha Flowers, NYSID’s Career Services and Internship Coordinator, will introduce students to the school’s career resources and development tools, helping them take the first steps toward landing jobs that could launch brilliant careers.

CONTACT: Sacsha.Flowers@nysid.edu

constantly educating yourself.

It’s to approach your work with the curiosity of a traveler and a researcher. When you are designing a space, you have to explore how the people who live there eat, worship, celebrate, and live.

You have to completely immerse yourself in the culture. This will make you a more tolerant human and a more layered designer.”

—THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS)

CREDIT: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

ABOVE: CIELO CORTES, VICTOR SOLARTE, JULISSA ALMONTE. TOP RIGHT: KIRA CEDENO. BOTTOM RIGHT: KARINA INFANTE, SONALIKA NAIR, GISSELLE SANCHEZ, SALONI MAHAGAOKAR, LESLIE ROBINSON.

This two-day virtual and in-person symposium on making sustainability a cornerstone of design education will feature Andrew Revkin, director of the Initiative on Communication, Innovation, and Impact at the Earth Institute; Jennifer Graham, principal and senior project manager, Perkins&Will; Avinash Rajagopal, editor-in-chief, Metropolis Magazine; Eric Corey Freed, award-winning architect, author, and senior vice president of sustainability for CannonDesign, Lorraine Francis, hospitality interior designer and CEO at Cadiz Collaboration, Wanda Dalla Costa, expert in indigenous design and Principal at Tawaw Architecture Collective, and many other thought leaders in sustainability in design.

MORE INFORMATION AT: teachinggreen.nysid.edu

“To be a global designer is to be

NEXT AT NYSID / Mark Your Calendars SEPTEMBER 21

OCTOBER 8–9

Rooms with a Viewpoint by Mitchell Owens

Teaching Green

All are welcome to this virtual event. Renowned design journalist and author Mitchell Owens will discuss Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles’ Paris residence, which was thrillingly minimalized by Jean-Michel Frank in the 1920s.

MORE INFORMATION AT:

nysid.edu/institute-for-continuing-professional-studies SEPTEMBER 24

Career Services Workshop

Sacsha Flowers, NYSID’s Career Services and Internship Coordinator, will introduce students to the school’s career resources and development tools, helping them take the first steps toward landing jobs that could launch brilliant careers.

CONTACT: Sacsha.Flowers@nysid.edu

constantly educating yourself.

It’s to approach your work with the curiosity of a traveler and a researcher. When you are designing a space, you have to explore how the people who live there eat, worship, celebrate, and live.

You have to completely immerse yourself in the culture. This will make you a more tolerant human and a more layered designer.”

—THERESE VIRSERIUS ’03 (AAS)

CREDIT: MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

ABOVE: CIELO CORTES, VICTOR SOLARTE, JULISSA ALMONTE. TOP RIGHT: KIRA CEDENO. BOTTOM RIGHT: KARINA INFANTE, SONALIKA NAIR, GISSELLE SANCHEZ, SALONI MAHAGAOKAR, LESLIE ROBINSON.

This two-day virtual and in-person symposium on making sustainability a cornerstone of design education will feature Andrew Revkin, director of the Initiative on Communication, Innovation, and Impact at the Earth Institute; Jennifer Graham, principal and senior project manager, Perkins&Will; Avinash Rajagopal, editor-in-chief, Metropolis Magazine; Eric Corey Freed, award-winning architect, author, and senior vice president of sustainability for CannonDesign, Lorraine Francis, hospitality interior designer and CEO at Cadiz Collaboration, Wanda Dalla Costa, expert in indigenous design and Principal at Tawaw Architecture Collective, and many other thought leaders in sustainability in design.

MORE INFORMATION AT: teachinggreen.nysid.edu

“To be a global designer is to be

170 East 70 Street New York, NY 10021

“New York City itself was

the classroom to me. We learned about the neoclassical design revival and these great examples from different eras were right outside my window.

We got to see it in the streets.

Also, my instructors took us to Gensler and Perkins&Will to meet designers who showed us their offices and projects.”

MYOUNG JOO CHUN ’02 (MFA2)