CCA News
Two IIDA Scholarships Twice as Nice for Interior Design
Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, by Jim Norrena
It’s not every day you hear the words “guerrilla” and “beauty” used together, although that’s exactly what happened when California College of the Arts Interior Design senior Jinney Kho’s Guerrilla Beauty School recently earned her a scholarship award issued by the Northern California Chapter of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA).
Better still, Interior Design junior Borum Song also was honored with a student scholarship for her Creative Activity in the Calculated Design submission. While CCA students are often in the lead for securing noteworthy scholarships, it’s always impressive to see more than one of the college’s students similarly recognized within the same discipline.
Kho and Song were honored at the IIDA Northern California Chapter’s annual Honor Awards program, held March 25 at Oakland’s historic Fox Theater. “It's like the Academy Awards for the architecture and design profession, and it's a big bash,” exclaimed a noticeably proud Katherine Lambert, chair of CCA’s Interior Design Program. “The students have to make their way up to the podium in front of about a thousand people!”
Sponsorship proceeds from the Honor Awards event help support the scholarships, set up by the IIDA-NC with the intent “to award these scholarships to student designers whose submission represents a unique understanding of the chosen subject conceptually, verbally and graphically.” Each scholarship is determined by an independent jury who measures how successfully the candidates address a specific area of focus.
Read more about the IIDA Honor Awards Student Scholarship 2009–10.
About the Student Projects
The scholarship challenge this year asked designers to demonstrate the application of the far-reaching principal “user-centered problem-solving design.” Sounds easy enough, right? Well, take a look at the accompanying slideshow to review each of the aforementioned designs before rushing to judgment.
Kho’s project entailed designing a semipermanent, three-level beauty school—one intended for an alley in Los Angeles that “latches onto a site . . . for up to a year before moving on to new locations.” Capitalizing on the elements of surprise, mobility, and containers, her design also relies on community-building and word-of-mouth messaging to secure awareness and support of the beauty school. (Grass roots never looked so good for Jinney, who was just hired as a junior designer at Gensler architects!)
Song's project depicts how program relationship and circulation development can incorporate not only multifunctionality but also large, light-filled spaces and modular utility. “My strategies focus on a new way of working in a living office,” she explains. “Usually the emphasis is on squeezing operations into small spaces, but with the advent of technology we find that creativity is more important. . . . Activity-based design indicates a new determination to relate office space to the work that is done within that space.” (Borum, you're welcome to drop by anytime and help me find my desk!)