New York School of Interior Design

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The Power of Pre-college

Is Pre-college a Key to Creating a More Diverse & Inclusive Interior Design Industry?

The Kravet family is partnering with NYSID and the Kips’ Bay Boys & Girls Club to broaden the pipeline to interior design, exposing young adults to the profession early.

This is the second installment of a series on how NYSID is partnering with nonprofits and corporations to expose diverse communities of high schoolers to Interior Design through its Pre-college program.

“Before this, I never knew anything about interior design or considered it as a career. I never thought I had the capability to make a floor plan, but then I did it and I was proud of myself.” - Ezinne Iroruzu, Pre-college student who joined from a Kips’ Bay Girls & Boys Club. Images above.

“Here’s what I love about working with sixteen-and-seventeen-year-olds: they’re open to everything. . .The number one thing we teach them is that interior design is a serious profession within their reach.” - Don Kossar, Director of Pre-college, NYSID

This summer, the student body of The New York School of Interior Design’s summer Pre-college program was more diverse than ever before. This is because NYSID sees its summer immersion into interior design for high schoolers as a unique opportunity to help diversify the profession. Says NYSID Dean and VP for Academic Affairs Ellen Fisher, “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.”

Many teenagers from underserved communities have never been exposed to interior design as a profession, and have few role models of people with creative careers in their lives. Says NYSID President David Sprouls, “We see our Pre-college program as an opportunity to help high schoolers from diverse backgrounds see themselves in interior design from a young age.” The Pre-college program is a deep dive into the basic skills of interior design, as well as an introduction to professionals working and thriving in the industry. The program provides real experience and role models. This is why NYSID has created a fund specifically to bring underserved students to its Pre-college Program, and why the Kravet family, who lead Kravet Inc., has provided a grant of $100,000, to be dispersed over the course of 5 years, to bring students from the Kips’ Bay Boys and Girls’ Club Summer Youth Employment Program to study in the NYSID Pre-College Program. (Read more about the grant.)

Says Ellen Kravet, Chair of the NYSID Board of Trustees and executive vice president and co-owner of Kravet, “Our family wants to give young students who may not have ever been exposed to the field of interior design the opportunity to experience this industry. It is key to introduce them at an early age to capture their interests and demonstrate that there is a whole world of interior design that they would never know about otherwise. It is a strategic move to gain the talent of young adults and bring them in to our industry — to educate and find young adults with drive and talent; those that could be the next customers, college students; our next generation of architects, interior designers, and great leaders of our industry.”

A Classroom That Reflects the World

In this summer’s program, there were 70 students spread over 5 classrooms in Pre-college I (introduction to residential design); and 27 students in Pre-college II (introduction to commercial design). The classrooms consisted of teenagers from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds; immigrants and first-generation Americans; city kids and teens from the suburbs; students from overseas; transgender students; and students of many religions and ethnicities. The four-week program was virtual this year because it was the safest way to conduct it as New York City slowly and fitfully emerges from the pandemic (Next year, Pre-college is likely to be a hybrid of in-person and virtual learning). A group of seven students from the Kips Bay Boys & Girls’ Club, whose participation was made possible by the Kravet family, joined both sessions of Pre-college from the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club facility on Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx. A group of twelve students from the YWCA of NYC, funded by the Steelcase Social Innovation Fellowship, also participated in Pre-college I (Read about NYSID’s work with the YWCA HERE). Students attended virtually from states like North Carolina, New Jersey, and California; and also from the nations of Columbia and Costa Rica. The classrooms were phenomenally diverse, as were the perspectives brought by the students. In the mornings, students attended a large full-community session. In the afternoons, they broke into smaller, supportive studios to work on projects with individual instructors.

What They Learned

In Pre-college I, which focuses on residential design, students learned the basics of how to draft, to understand scale and spatial relationships, and to communicate visually with clients while designing a NYC apartment. Real-world inspiration is a big part of the experience. Says Don Kossar, NYSID’s Director of Pre-college, “We had virtual tours and Jamie Drake of Drake Anderson showed the students drawings he did when he was 12-years old. He took us on a tour of his office and showed us their current projects. We visited Ralph Pucci and M2L to learn about how furniture is made. SICIS taught students about contemporary mosaics, which instructor Francisco De Leon reinforced with a lesson in pattern making for textiles, tiles and other interior elements.” All five of the Pre-college I instructors were practicing designers: Francisco De Leon, Pamela Giolito, Don Kossar, Ana Penalba, and Ajaee Shepard.

Amirun Chowdhury, a sixteen-year-old rising senior who joined through the Kips’ Bay Summer Youth Employment Program, found that he preferred residential design to commercial design. For his residential project for Pre-college I, he imagined an apartment for his favorite rapper and fashion icon, Travis Scott. He thought about his theoretical client’s tastes and needs, adding details like a LED-lit sneaker display (because Scott loves sneakers) and a piano. Chowdhury says, “I really liked this program and the instructors were so nice. I think the most important skill I took away from this experience, and the hardest to learn, was spacing and scaling.” He adds, “My favorite aspect of the program was the tours of showrooms and design firms. I learned that there are many different careers in the design field: lighting design; furniture making, mosaics and pattern design. This opened my mind to possibilities.”

In Pre-college II, the final two weeks of the summer program, students were tasked with designing a hotel and restaurant. Says Kossar, “The focus shifts to designing public spaces. Now you have to know about codes and you’re responsible for the health and wellbeing of groups of people. You also have to integrate branding. We toured and studied The Baccarat hotel as a case study, and looked at iconic branding, like Tiffany’s blue box and the Apple logo.” Adds Kossar, “The number one thing we teach them in Pre-College is that interior design is a serious profession within their reach. It’s not just about picking pillows and colors. It’s about how an interior can make you work, feel, and function better. It’s about selecting materials and finishes that don’t pollute the indoor environment and make people sick.” One of several guest speakers was Luca Baraldo, LEED AP, a senior project manager from the firm Cook Fox, who spoke to the students about his life as a sustainable designer and his current projects. There were two classrooms of Pre-College II, and the instructors were Don Kossar and Randi Halpern.

Don Kossar pointed to Ezinne Iroruzu, a Kips’ Bay club member, as one of the students’ whose final project in Pre-College II was impressive. Ms. Iroruzu created the concept and preliminary plans for the “Easy Hotel,” and she drew a logo for the project based on the letters of her nickname, EZI, and the meaning of her full name, Ezinne, which means “good mother” in the Igbo language, primarily spoken in Nigeria. For her hotel, she wanted to create a world of comfort and ease that felt like a warm embrace, but also like an escape into a wild garden of imagination. She used the Japanese anime film studio Studio Ghibli as the inspiration, adding details like a mural of the dragon from the film “Spirited Away” on the ceiling. Kossar helped her work out the details of ideating and sketching an indoor waterfall and bridge in her floorplan.

“For me the best thing about this program was just learning about interior design in general,” says Iroruzu. “Before this, I never knew anything about it or considered it as a career. I’m a rising junior and I am beginning to think about what career paths I want to take. Interior Design is really interesting and might be something I want to do. I never made a mood board or ideation board. I never thought I had the capability to make a floor plan but then I did it and I was proud of myself. My teachers were kind and made me feel like I could do it.” She adds that the visits to firms and showrooms were inspiring, and the information about internships at these companies was very valuable. “There is a whole different world of New York that I have not heard about or seen and this program opened my mind to it,” she says.

Layered Opportunities in Design

Among the many services it provides, The Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club offers work and hands-on career experience to inner city teenagers through a Summer Youth Employment Program. The non-profit’s major fundraiser is the annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House, a who’s who of the interior design world. This new partnership between Kips’ Bay, Kravet, and NYSID will help the nonprofit layer opportunities in design for the young people they serve. Says Daniel Quintero, Executive Director of Kips’ Bay Boys and Girls Clubs, “The youngsters in our program often only know the world as the 3-5 block radius around them. It’s our job to illuminate what’s out there for them. With a program like NYSID’s Pre-college, a percentage will say this is awesome and that’s when we hit the jackpot and open up a career possibility to cultivate and nurture. This organization has deep relationships in the interior design community and our youngsters have gone to the showhouse and met with designers in the past. We hope by providing multiple exposures and skills we can provide more opportunities. This is why our excellent working relationship with NYSID President David Sprouls and the College is so important.” Adds Ellen Kravet, “We know that by strategically weaving together the program at Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, the educational components delivered by NYSID, and the support from the Kravet family, a winning outcome will be achieved.” Says David Sprouls. “It’s about changing the industry, and even more importantly, lives. Thanks to the Kravet family, more young creatives will find a fulfilling future in interior design, and bring their experience with them.”

Read more about the potential of Pre-college and NYSID’s work with the YWCA of NYC through the Steelcase Social Innovation Fellowship.