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Best in Class
Students looking for
a top-quality school first should consider what
a superior education really entails.
 Tomorrow’s
world will need product innovators, industrial
specialists, strategic planners. It’s no
longer enough to leave school with drawing and
drafting skills, architectural and design knowledge,
business and interpersonal skills — you need
the expertise to function in a high-tech workplace
while incorporating humanistic sensibilities.
It all begins with a first-class
education, but with so many accredited design
schools, it’s difficult to choose one when
your future is on the line. After all, every program
has its own unique strengths and weaknesses —
you must decide which will make the difference
to your career.
To help you sort through
the crowded field, educators across the United
States were asked what makes a best-in-class interior
design program.
Perspective: Why
do interior design students have a hard time choosing
a program that will meet long-term goals?
Barbara Anderson: You’d
be surprised how many students don’t understand
what interior design is. Some students only have
a vague idea of what the profession offers.
We try to be as forthright
with our prospective students as we can. All design
education has a bit of a problem with lack of
fit — what the student expects education
to be like and what it really is like. We have
to focus on some very basic concepts that students
may not even realize are related to what they
will be using in the real world.
Anna Marshall-Baker:
An interior design education really is about
helping students understand how to think, learn
and do. We enable students to become informed
citizens who are interested in their world. That
way, when they enter the real world, through their
experience, they can blossom into interior designers.
You shouldn’t compromise
the quality of your education. Ultimately, you
have to decide what you want to do, where you
want to be and find the resources to get there.
Franklin Becker:
Today’s career path is not that clear-cut.
Students often start in a design firm doing more
traditional work, but because of the critical
thinking skills design students bring to a situation,
they end up in consulting firms or other firms
that require these skills — from interior
design to graphic design to entertainment to straight-forward
business consulting. Design is a wide-open field
in which students apply skills in a novel way.
A design education, if done well, can open up
opportunities.
Perspective: Ideally,
what characteristics should you look for in a
school’s faculty?
Marshall-Baker: Good
teachers are contemporary, current and well-read
with issues that involve the designed environment
but also are involved with professional organizations.
Through my involvement in the Interior Design
Educators Council (IDEC), I get exposed to all
sorts of things going on at other schools. Those
connections at professional organizations are
critically important.
Frank Morigi: Too
many faculties are just getting their degrees
and then teaching. If we can get more people with
professional experience to teach, the better a
school is going to be.
Denise Guerin: An
interior designer with a background in architecture
or other allied professions brings a richness.
Interior design is such an interdisciplinary profession
that this kind of experience is invaluable.
But, most of all, a faculty must be dedicated
to student learning, have the mandatory credentials
and really want to teach. Educators must continue
to develop the body of knowledge for the profession
and continue to learn themselves.
Perspective: What
should students look for in the interior design
curriculum?
Anderson: In academia,
it’s important to separate out succinct areas
of study, but in design, you must integrate as
much as possible. Any good program is going to
have a student-learning focus in the choices they
make. If your choices are always made on what
will make the best student learning, you can practically
guarantee that students will learn what they need
to know.
Marshall-Baker: A
well-developed curriculum will begin in the first
year with a studio emphasis on design fundamentals
and history of interior design, architecture and
art. Studio is really about engaging thought.
Also, competitions serve
as a wonderful measure for programs to understand
how the work their students are producing compares
with the work of students in other programs.
An internship, practicum,
or a field or co-op experience is very important
to interior design education, and the better programs
will have that experience in some form.
Susan Kirkman: A
good curriculum has to have the ability to change
with changes in the industry. At the university
level, you can only make minor changes every couple
of years through a committee. A really good program
has to be able to change with the industry, change
with trends and put into practice classes that
are needed for the times.
Perspective: Beyond
theory, what does a top-notch program teach design
students?
Morigi: A good school
should educate future designers as problem-solvers.
Most schools are just training designers for entry-level
positions rather than educating designers for
the future problems.
Becker: Students
themselves are interested in skills development
because that’s tangible. But, ultimately,
knowledge is shifting so quickly and problems
are so complex that we find it’s more important
to coach students in thinking in different ways.
We require our students
to make a lot of professional quality presentations
and reports. They have to think on their feet
and convey their ideas to an audience in a variety
of ways.
Guerin: We want students
who are critical thinkers, passionate about design
and have a good work ethic, but if they don’t
come to us with that, we have to be good role
models. We have to create critical thinkers. We
have to come up with projects and assignments
that require critical thinking. We can’t
just teach them solutions, we have to teach them
to think.
Perspective: When
students look at a course schedule, what core
classes or areas of focus are essential for a
well-rounded experience?
Morigi: You should
be looking for a professional degree with a liberal
education. We seem to tend too much toward the
degree part and not enough toward the humanities
or social sciences. We’re dealing with other
people and how they relate to the city, each other
and the room. With a liberal education, you can
create a humanistic approach, rather than just
a decorative, architectural or structural approach.
Becker: Our students
are integrated and embedded in a program that
has world-class psychologists and behavior experts
that all feed into and help students develop a
broad-based education in design. They are able
to think critically and see design in a broader
context.
Our strong behavioral and
organizational focus allows our students to bring
a strong commitment to environmental design —
in sustainable design but also in community issues
for critical populations.
Guerin: The human
is the most important component of the problem
and the solution. Unless we truly understand the
human needs — psychological, physical and
environmental — we will continue to design
the wrong solutions.
Perspective: What
do you see in students who are the most successful?
Guerin: I tell my
students that I want them to be productive members
of the profession at graduation. But my concern
is that they are leaders of the profession in
10 to 15 years. I want them to be the change-makers.
Part of the role of a good program is to promote
professional leadership.
Becker: We’re
educating students who will go into the field
and serve clients and employers effectively. But
we also want to shape the profession for which
we’re preparing those students.
Perspective: With
technology changing so quickly, how can a best-in-class
program integrate relevant, practical skills?
Kirkman: The program
must embrace industry standards and be on the
leading edge of that. Just providing computer-aided
design experience is not enough. You need to be
into all the bells and whistles that are conversant
with the industry. The more interactive, the better.
This is the point-and-click generation, and you
have to be that way or you’ll lose them.
Anderson: Technology
is a problem. If you teach students to be highly
conversant with the current technology, they’ll
only be competent at the time they leave. You
have to teach them to be lifelong learners.
Tommy Lambeth: It’s
about using your hands, eyes, brains and heart.
Direct experience with making things. Our entire
first semester is focused on making things. Not
making models or images, but making the actual
things. Through working with a variety of materials,
students make or craft a variety of products or
artifacts that have some relation to human use
or basic design.
Perspective: What
do you feel are the courses that will emerge as
important to the practitioners of the future?
Guerin: Intergenerational
or multigenerational design. The emphasis on healthcare
will continue, especially for the elderly. This
is a wellness approach, not a disease approach
— the need to understand human behavior better
so design solutions can improve performance, satisfaction,
health and welfare.
Becker: Interior
design now is focusing on more fundamental issues
in how to use the built environment to promote
health and productivity. It’s gone beyond
aesthetics toward a more fundamental challenge.
Sustainable design has gone
from a fringe activity to center court. In every
aspect, it’s pervading students’ and
corporations’ thinking. They are asking for
it. It’s changing how we think of materials
and their social impact.
Kirkman: We just
put in our mission statement that we’re going
to teach design responsibility. This is a growing
trend with architects — taking a close look
at social responsibility and how and where you
build so you don’t create harm.
Marshall-Baker: Cradle-to-cradle
design — looking beyond the issues of green
design and sustainability. Whatever you pull out
of the planet for whatever purpose, whenever its
usefulness is over, it disintegrates back into
the form it came from. It’s important to
think about how our culture has to change and
the role we can play in that change. We have to
think of humans as stewards of the Earth.
Morigi: Ecological
and sustainable design, but also programs that
have to do with the built environment. Furniture
is a good open area — there’s an opportunity
for universities and manufacturers to collaborate
and upgrade products for the real world.
Lambeth: There will
be a focus on the interface with technology and
new material exploration and development. The
space program has produced so many new materials
that have been integrated into popular culture
over the years. Lighting, computers and technology
are increasing so quickly that designers need
to think about how to integrate them into the
workplace and homes.
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