Interior Design program, students earn recognition
By Holly luka, MNS intern, & Brian Clark, Marketing and News Services
Individual students as well as the overall program of WSU’s Interior Design Department have received national accolades recently, adding to the department’s already strong reputation.
DesignIntelligence, a bimonthly journal for architecture and design professionals, included WSU in its 2009 list of best interior design schools. In its first time on the list, WSU’s graduate program in interior design, based at WSU Spokane, was ranked ninth among all interior design programs in the United States.
Rankings are based on surveys of professional design firms around the country. The top-ten placement shows that WSU graduates are excelling in their profession.
“What the ranking suggests is that our students are doing extremely well in entry level positions,” said Associate Professor and Department Chair John Turpin.
The ranking also shows the growth of the program in Spokane. “We have had the program for seven years and enough students have now gone through the program to where people are starting to take notice,” Turpin said.
Judges in national interior design competitions also have taken note of WSU student expertise. Four Cougars earned honors in the Retail Design Institute Student Design Competition, and another WSU interior design student, Cassidy Lange, placed second in the International Interior Design Association’s Sustainable Design Competition.
Chung Yung (Simon) Ho, Gwen McConn and Natasha Palewicz placed first, second and third, respectively, in the RDI competition, which asked students to design a 40,000-square-foot, high-end grocery store that would compete with businesses like Whole Foods groceries. Meagan Phillips received an honorable mention in the same competition.
Judy Theodorson, WSU assistant professor of interdisciplinary design and the director of the integrated design lab, used the RDI competition as a final project for her capstone interior design studio class. The 18 students in the class started by spending three weeks researching food, grocery store trends and retail behavior. They read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” WSU’s Common Reading book, as part of their research. They also talked about issues and topics regarding food in order to get a grasp on the background of the grocery store industry. From there, the students came up with their own proposals. Theodorson commented on them, and then students began developing final interior and exterior designs.
All of the students in Theodorson’s class entered the competition, which drew a total of 72 entries from around the nation. This was the fourth year that her class had entered the RDI competition, and every year someone has placed. This year, however, was the first time WSU students took all three cash prizes as well as one of the two honorable mentions.
“The class was uniformly strong,” Theodorson said. “It was a great class.”
Cassidy Lange also was a member of that design class. After submitting her grocery store design to the RDI competition, she tweaked the design slightly and submitted it for the International Interior Design Association Sustainable Design Competition. She placed second.
Alumna at Work: Nicole Cecil, Interior Design 1996
Nicole Cecil (Interior Design ’96) was in the first class of students to graduate from WSU’s Interdisciplinary Design Institute in Spokane. Studio-ready, Cecil went to work for the University of Idaho in Moscow, in University Residences and Architectural and Engineering Services after graduation.
 
Top: Corporate interior designed by Nicole Cecil. |
Cecil, who now works as an interior designer with the Boise-based architectural firm CSHQA, said that studying at the IDI “completely changed the direction of my career. I thought I would be more residential in focus, but working with the IDI team was completely instrumental in where I am now.”
Cecil is a project manager with CSHQA focusing on commercial projects such as airports and corporate and government buildings. Recently, she and her team won an award for a potential LEED-CI Gold Certified Ada County government building improvement project.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program is a set of criteria which, when met, reduce a building’s ecological footprint. LEED is the “nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings,” according to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Web site.
When it comes to the interiors of buildings, materials selection is key to sustainability. Cecil said that working in the materials library at WSU Spokane prepared her well for the position she now holds.
Long nights in the studio also prepared her to be studio-ready, as did a couple of senior-year projects. One of those projects, developing a plan for low-income housing in Spokane, involved collaboration between studios—a typical real-world scenario where parts of complex projects are jobbed out to individual firms.
Now married and the mother of two daughters, Cecil said interior designers still struggle with a deeply rooted preconceived notion about what they do. “People think we’re decorators. Today I wrote technical specs—it’s what we spend a great deal of time doing.”
Design, in other words, is in the details, and the details are in building codes, architectural plans and a deep knowledge of which materials to use to give the client the best fit in terms of aesthetics and sustainability.
Dream Job: Luke Van Duyn, Interior Design 2007
 
Top: Tradeshow booth by Luke Van Duyn for the House of Yue-Sai home interiors. |
Luke Van Duyn (’07) mixed modern and classical elements along with a few Asian accents to create a House of Yue-Sai look for the dynamic entrepreneur’s new home interiors business.
People magazine called Chinese-American Yue-Sai Kan “the most famous woman in China.” The owner of the largest cosmetics company in China, she recently turned her eye to the interiors of homes.
Yue-Sai hired Van Duyn to lead this new endeavor. Working with a staff of 10 interns and designers, in seven days Van Duyn whipped together a tradeshow booth for the International Shanghai Interiors Expo. The show included companies such as Versace Home and Roche Bobois.
The results were spectacular for both the House of Yue-Sai and for Van Duyn. He and Yue-Sai have been featured on CNN, Luxury Items and Spaces, and the Chinese program Young T.V. and in an interview with GQ.
“Luckily,” Van Duyn said, “some of my connections in Shanghai include furniture manufacturers, so favors were definitely pulled.” It was all worth it, though, as both the public and the profession were impressed by the results. “Yue-Sai herself was blown away!”
Video: ID alumna Cyanna Goold talks about how her education at WSU helped launch her career in Seattle
Succeeding by Design
- Interior Design program, students earn recognition
- Alumna at Work: Nicole Cecil, Interior Design 1996
- Dream Job: Luke Van Duyn, Interior Design 2007
The changing face of ID
- Early 1900s—Washington State College offers classes in interior design and home decoration.
- 1960s—Washington State University offers a new major in interior design, including classes covering materials science, building codes and collaborating with architects.
- 1990s—WSU establishes the Interdisciplinary Design Institute in Spokane, offering a Master’s Degree in Interior Design and a Doctor of Design degree.
- 2009—WSU Department of Interior Design ranked 9th nationally by DesignIntelligence.