Summer Pre-College: Your Chance to Design Your Future
“I tell my students that interior design has many types of work to offer. One can work in an office or a showroom or design patterns and textiles or furniture, and the list goes on.”
Make this summer count despite the pandemic. NYSID’s live, virtual Pre-College programs offer hands-on interior design experience, real relationships with practicing designers, and a fun, social environment with other artistic high school students.
Sign Up for NYSID’s Summer Pre-College Programs
Last summer, Don Kossar, director of Summer Pre-College programs at NYSID, challenged the high school students in his Pre-College II course to integrate branding into the design of a hotel lobby and restaurant. His students’ final projects exceeded his expectations, especially the work of Katherine Chung, who created a hotel and restaurant space inspired by the popular Japanese anime film company Studio Ghibli. Says Kossar, “Her presentation, especially her watercolor of the restaurant with a huge tree growing through it, was not only gorgeous, it also told the story of a brand.”
Watercolor rendering of a restaurant inspired by Studio Ghibli by Katherine Chung, 2019.
This year, the programs will be offered virtually to ensure student and instructor safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will it be possible for students to gain the same hands-on understanding of interior design in an online classroom? The answer is YES! according to Don Kossar. “These are not pre-recorded lectures; they are real-time classes focused on doing and creating,” says Kossar, “There will be a live Zoom classroom in which all the students come together for a slide presentation from an instructor. Then, the students will go into Zoom ‘break-out rooms’ in which they can work on a project in a small group of 8 to 10 people, under the supervision of one instructor. Learning will be hands on. For example, we’ll use a white board to teach them how to properly measure cabinets and doors, and then we’ll send them off to measure in their own homes. We’ll have interactive talks with celebrated designers like Jamie Drake (co-principal of Drake/Anderson), who’ll discuss what it’s really like to be an interior designer, and we’ll go on virtual tours of showrooms.”
Here’s the inside scoop on each Pre-College offering in summer 2020:
Design a Shelter from the Storm
Pre-College I (residential design) | $1,235 | July 6–17, 10am–2pm
This course educates students about what interior design is as it takes them through all of the phases of designing a one-bedroom apartment, with a special focus on the kitchen and bathroom. Pamela Giolito, a NYSID instructor who teaches Pre-College, and who is the co-principal of the interior design firm Marino + Giolito Inc. says, “TV shows make interior design look like its just shopping and picking out pretty things, but there is so much that leads up to that. Our knowledge, as interior designers, needs to be vast in construction, art, business, accounting, codes, organization, presentation, and scheduling. The most important thing a high schooler will take from this course is a realistic sense of interior design.” Another Pre-College instructor, Francisco de Leon, says, “I tell my students that interior design has many types of work to offer. One can work in an office or a showroom or design patterns and textiles or furniture, and the list goes on.”
This year, there will be a group of approximately 40 students joining from around the United States, and around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Japan and Mexico. This course will be team-taught by four interior designers. All of the instructors will teach the whole process of designing an apartment, but they will each give presentations on specific areas of expertise. Pamela Giolito will focus on “Programming,” the first phase of interior design in which the designer gathers information on the client and the history of the structure. Don Kossar, president of Don Kossar Interiors, will present on space planning and furniture layout. Christina Carpio, an art educator and hospitality interior designer, will be helping the students develop a narrative for the final project through inspiration imagery and color. Francisco de León, a graphic designer, architect, and president of FADesign, will expose students to pattern making and collage. Says Pamela Giolito, “The team teaching is exciting because we feed off each others’ ideas, which makes for dynamic conversations.” She says, “I look forward to taking my students on a tour of my house, and into my home office and studio.” Virtual tours of showrooms will be part of the experience, including a tour of SICIS, a mosaic art factory that practices the art form as it was done in Byzantine times.
Design an Escape & an Experience
Pre-College II (contract design: hotels & restaurants) | $1,235 | July 20–31, 10am–2pm
“People usually think about designing homes when they first dream of becoming an interior designer,” says Don Kossar, who teaches contract design in Summer Pre-College II, “But you can do things in a commercial space you can’t do in a residential space because clients tend to be more conservative with their homes. Contract design, especially the design of hotels, can be more innovative, conceptual, and purely creative. This first exposure to commercial design is mind blowing for my students and tends to open up a whole new realm of understanding about design.”
In this course, students design a hotel lobby and restaurant. There is no prerequisite for Pre-College II: you can jump right in without having taken Pre-College I, but hospitality design is very conceptually driven, so Kossar likes the fact that the class gets to spend a lot of time on ideation, and that the environment is a small, tightly knit group of students. This year, the group will be taking virtual tours of hotels such as The Baccarat (as in the crystal brand), studying not just aesthetics but also functionality. Kossar will challenge students to weave branding and storytelling into their hospitality designs, introducing them to visual branding through an exploration of Apple’s logo and the iconic blue Tiffany box. Students will be charged with creating a brand story through their design of a hotel lobby, as his students did last year when they designed wildly creative hospitality spaces, including one based on the life of Audrey Hepburn and another on the Japanese anime films of Studio Ghibli.
Don Kossar says that no matter which Pre-College experience you chose, you’ll learn, “Interior design is a serious profession. It’s about creating beauty, but also problem solving, wellness, health, safety, and functionality, especially in the COVID-19 era.”