Why Are NYSID Students Winning So Many Awards?
Behind the Outstanding Projects
2022-23 has been a banner academic year for NYSID students in regard to winning industry-wide competitions. Two recent graduates, Sarah Choudhary ’23 (MFA2) and Motomu (Lucia) Sakakibara ’22 (BFA), were selected for the Metropolis Future100 program in 2023, which identifies the top fifty graduating interior design students in the US and Canada. For 2022, NYSID students and recent alumni took seven of the top honors in International Design Awards (IDA) categories, including “Emerging Interior Designer of the Year” for Sheng Wei (Wilson) Yang ’22 (MFA1); the “People’s Choice Award” for Mohamed (Sam) Abdelaziz ’23 (MFA2); and a gold, two silvers, and a bronze for Choudhary. The IDA also granted honorable mentions to four other NYSID students. There were wins from some of the same students for the 2022 MUSE Design Awards, the 2022 LIV Hospitality Design Awards, the Hospitality Design Awards, and the 2022 NYCxDESIGN student awards. We set out to find out why the students of this small college are winning so many accolades.
There’s a personal story behind the project that won the IDA’s Gold for Commercial Design in 2022. When recent alum Sheng Wei Yang, known as “Wilson” to his former classmates at NYSID, first arrived in the United States from Taiwan, he was “obsessed” with snow because he’d never experienced it before. Snowboarding felt magical to him. On a trip to the outlet malls in Woodbury Commons, he bought himself a snowboarding jacket from the luxury outdoor brand Moncler. It became his most treasured possession.
Flash forward to 2020, the second year of Yang’s MFA1 program, to the Interior Design Studio III class with instructor Todd Class, also NYSID’s assistant dean of Academic Computing & Technology. Yang, whose undergraduate degree is in “biomedical studies” found himself “afraid and overwhelmed” when NYSID’s curriculum progressed from residential design in the first year of the program to commercial design in Studio III. Class tasked Yang and his classmates with creating a unique retail environment in the footprint of a real store in SOHO. “We used to joke that Todd is like the dad of NYSID. He’s so supportive as you make the leap to commercial design,” says Yang. “The most interesting thing about the retail project was the research on case studies we were required to do. When you ran into a problem in your design, Todd gave you not just good general advice, but specific solutions and examples.” Yang’s story points to an idea that has been repeated by many NYSID students: The intimacy of its small classes allows for extensive guidance from instructors who are practicing designers.
Yang poured his passions for snow, cold, photography, and the Moncler brand into his retail project for Studio III. He based his store design on Annie Leibovitz’s photos for the fall/winter 2015 Moncler advertising campaign. He envisioned a section of the store that would replicate cold mountain weather conditions as customers tried on the product.
After he graduated, he sent this project, as well as the thesis he worked on under the auspices of NYSID instructor Barbara Weinrich, for consideration by the IDA. No one helped him with his contest entry, but he’d had extensive portfolio feedback from instructors and guest critics on his projects in studios. He won IDA’s Emerging Interior Designer of the Year, the Gold for Commercial Design for Moncler Studio, and the Silver for Museum Design for his thesis, the Museum of Fashion Design and Technology. He also won the MUSE Design Award for Interior Design - Exhibits, Pavilions & Exhibitions, for his Museum of Fashion Design and Technology.
Says Yang, who now works as a junior designer at ForrestPerkins, a division of Perkins Eastman, “It meant a lot to win the awards because it was validation from outside the school as I applied for jobs and entered the work world. These awards on your resume can give you a shot at one of the companies on your ‘dream job’ list.”
Sheng Wei (Wilson) Yang ’22 (MFA1)
Moncler Studio project designed by Sheng Wei (Wilson) Yang ’22 (MFA1). AWARDS: 2022 IDA Emerging Interior Designer of the Year & 2022 IDA Gold for Commercial.
Meet NYSID’s Design Scholarship Competition Coordinator
Shell Azar is NYSID’s senior academic advisor and design scholarship competition coordinator, as well as a practicing designer and principal of SAS Design Studios. The landscape of existing contests and their rules shift every year, and it’s part of her job to keep students informed of which awards they are eligible for and to support them if they ask for help. She’s vigilant about communication with the student body, sometimes even working with Academic Affairs to inform specific students that their body of work might be a good fit for a contest. However, she takes little credit for the recent victories of NYSID students. “It might start with the people who apply to NYSID to begin with,” hypothesizes Azar. “Our students are highly motivated achievers, often people who have already been out in the world and are now laser-focused on their futures in design.” She adds, “Also, the adjunct faculty are at the top of their game at architecture and design firms, and they push our students to present professionally in a way that the industry recognizes.”
Motomu (Lucia) Sakakibara ’22 (BFA)
Komorebi Console designed by Motomu (Lucia) Sakakibara ’22 (BFA). AWARD: 2022 Interior Design magazine’s NYCxDESIGN Award
Inside a Studio that Produced Many Honors
Instructor Joseph Goldstein’s MFA2 Studio II, which focuses on the design of museums, produced projects that won the IDA’s Silver for Institutional Design and Bronze for Commercial Design for Sarah Choudhary, four IDA honorable mentions for Pooja Panchal, Mohamed “Sam” Abdelaziz, Nivedhitha “Nivi” Ravi, and Juyeon Kim, as well as the IDA People’s Choice Award for Abdelaziz. This is an incredible cluster of honors and awards from a single studio and instructor.
Abdelaziz, who won the IDA People’s Choice Award, says of Goldstein’s studio, “Joseph demands that you think outside the norm and create something that is truly unique.”
When asked if there was something special about his Studio II course, Goldstein said, “Perhaps only that I try to have one more project review with guest critics than may be typical. Getting specific feedback on the details of their projects from practicing designers is incredibly useful to my students. There are so many excellent outside critics to call on here in New York. My students get three guest critiques, which elevates the discourse and has the effect of enabling the course to get better over time.” For the Museum of the Moving Image project in his studio, he requires his students to produce a video of a project, which makes their portfolios especially dynamic.
When asked, Goldstein helps his former students with contest applications by reviewing their entries and giving feedback, and when needed, he writes recommendation letters, but never during the semester. “In the studio, our goal is student learning and innovation so that designers develop as potential future leaders in the field of interior design. Supporting student contest entries typically comes in long after the semester.”
When Goldstein reviews his former students’ portfolios and projects for contest entry, his advice is not about changing the images or renderings. He tells them that the words matter too. He helps them make sure the applications are “without spelling errors and have a written description of the concept which is grammatically correct.” As once suggested to him by Dean and VP for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher, he also advises them to put their “strongest images first,” because “contest juries may have thousands of applications to sift through and it can be important to make an impression immediately.”
Sarah Choudhary ’23 (MFA2)
Perspectives from Two Major Award Winners
MFA2 alumni Sarah Choudhary ’23, who just graduated in May, won the IDA’s Design Studio Gold in Institutional and Silver in Commercial for her NYU Museum of Fashion Design, which she created in MFA2 Studio I with Donna Goodman. She won the IDA’s Silver for Institutional Design, and Bronze for Commercial for her Homage to Disney museum, which she created in MFA2 Studio II with Goldstein. She sent her whole portfolio to Metropolis before even finishing her thesis and was selected as one of the Metropolis Future100, a huge honor. She was also named Emerging Interior Designer of the Year, 2022, by the LIV Hospitality Design Awards for her project Hotel Cirque, which she created in MFA Studio III, taught by Ian Gordon. She also won the Hospitality Design Award from Hospitality Design magazine. Her award-winning hotel design is based around the brand of Cirque Du Soleil.
Choudhary thinks it’s not one studio, but the layering of design challenges through the whole program that has made her project work strong. “I think it has to do with how different every project of ours is when we are given the brief,” Choudhary says. “We are pushed out of our comfort zones, all the way from the concept to the schematic to the execution. Each professor takes an extremely different approach, so we must try new things constantly.” Choudhary attended architecture school at Central Saint Martins, London, where her class size was huge. She says, “The one-on-one time you are able to have with instructors in small class settings at NYSID has a big impact on your projects.” Long after she finished her studio with Joseph Goldstein, she showed him her contest entries, and he gave her suggestions. As practicing architects and designers, NYSID faculty members are busy, yet they make extra time to invest in their students’ futures. Small class sizes foster strong relationships.
Choudhary’s advice to students who want to apply for awards is, “State your concept strongly,” and “Take the initiative and ask your professors to do a portfolio review.”
Mohamed (Sam) Abdelaziz ’23 (MFA2)
Space Travel Movie Museum project designed by Mohamed (Sam) Abdelaziz ’23 (MFA2). AWARD: IDA People’s Choice Award and Honorable Mention
It’s not only graduate students who are winning the big design contests. Recent alumna Motomu (Lucia) Sakakibara ’22 (BFA) is one of the two NYSID students who were selected for the prestigious Metropolis Future100 program in 2023. She also won Interior Design magazine’s Best of the Year 2021 for her design of a Komorebi Console, and Interior Design magazine’s 2022 NYCxDESIGN Award.
“The culture and intimacy of NYSID are such advantages,” says Sakakibara, “Your professors know you and your interests.” Sakakibara says instructors Warren Ashworth, Rene Estacio, and Stephanie Werner were a huge influence on her. She was not reticent about asking for guidance and portfolio reviews from faculty, and even the dean! She developed a relationship with Dean Fisher, and ultimately was her student in the Professional Practice II course. Dean Fisher reviewed Sakakibara’s portfolio on multiple occasions during her time at NYSID and wrote her a letter of recommendation for the Metropolis program.
“So many students shy away from contest entry. But I strongly encourage them to go for it,” says Sakakibara, who now works as a junior interior designer at Ennead Architects. “These awards definitely help in landing internships and jobs, and they are the only way to evaluate where your work stands outside an academic context.”
2022-23 Industry Award Winners from NYSID
Mohamed "Sam" Abdelaziz ’23 (MFA2)
● 2022 IDA People’s Choice Award and Honorable Mention for Space Travel Movie Museum (MFA2 Studio II – Joseph Goldstein, instructor)
Sarah Choudhary ’23 (MFA2)
● 2023 Metropolis Future100 for portfolio
● 2022 IDA Design Studio Gold for Institutional, Silver for Commercial, for NYU School of Fashion Design (MFA2 Studio I – Donna Goodman, instructor)
● 2022 IDA Silver for Institutional, Bronze for Commercial, for Homage to Disney Museum (MFA2 Studio II – Joseph Goldstein, instructor)
● 2022 LIV Hospitality Design Awards, Emerging Interior Designer of the Year for Hotel Le Cirque (MFA Studio III – Ian Gordon, instructor)
● 2023 Hospitality Design Award from Hospitality Design magazine for Hotel Le Cirque (MFA Studio III – Ian Gordon, instructor)
Juyeon Kim ’23 (MFA2)
● 2022 IDA Honorable Mention for Children's Film Museum (MFA2 Studio II – Joe Goldstein instructor)
Motomu (Lucia) Sakakibara ’22 (BFA)
● 2023 Metropolis Future 100 for portfolio
● 2022 Interior Design magazine’s NYCxDESIGN Award for Komorebi Console (Furniture Design – Rene Estacio)
Sheng Wei ( Wilson) Yang ’22 (MFA1)
● 2022 IDA Emerging Interior Designer of the Year for Moncler Studio (ID Studio III – Todd Class, instructor)
● 2022 IDA Gold for Commercial for Moncler Studio (ID Studio III – Todd Class, instructor)
● 2022 IDA Silver for Museum of Fashion Design and Technology (Thesis – Barbara Weinreich, instructor)
● 2022 MUSE Design Award for Interior Design - Exhibits, Pavilions & Exhibitions (Thesis – Barbara Weinreich, instructor)
Pooja Panchal, ’23 (MFA2)
● IDA Honorable Mention for Fast and Furious (MFA2 Studio II – Joseph Goldstein, instructor)
Nivedhitha (Nivi) Ravi ’23 (MFA2)
● IDA Honorable Mention for Bollywood Museum (MFA2 Studio II, Joseph Goldstein – instructor)
The editors were unable to list awards announced after April 2023