SPDC interior design students win second place in the 2018 Design Challenge Competition

On Sept. 26, 2018, an MSU ID student group earned second place in the 2018 Design Challenge Competition presented by the Home Builders Associate of Southeastern Michigan’s Professional Women in Building Council and Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County.

Image of two interior design students sitting in the office they designed for the competition.
Interior design seniors Kellie Devries (left) and Emily Trevarrow (right) sit in the office space designed by Trevarrow, senior Breezy McEntee, and junior Gyuri Jang, who earned second place in the 2018 Design Challenge Competition.

On Sept. 26, 2018, an MSU interior design student group earned second place in the 2018 Design Challenge Competition presented by the Home Builders Associate of Southeastern Michigan’s Professional Women in Building Council and Habitat for Humanity of Oakland County.

Team members included seniors Emily Trevarrow and Breezy McEntee, and junior Gyuri Jang.

Seventeen teams participated in the competition. The award was based on the judge’s evaluation and public votes. More than 300 people participated in the vote.

“We are so proud of our team for the amount of thought that we put into this design. We are very excited to be able to represent MSU interior design program in a charitable way, as well as a competitive one,” said Trevarrow.

The students were tasked with gathering items from the Habitat for Humanity and repurposing them into new designs. The team used a desk as the anchor for their design and created an office space with the aim of creating a “bold yet friendly” office environment.

“We chose to do an office, because we were able to find some pieces from the warehouse that complimented each other very well. We saw the desk piece and were inspired to build an in-home office,” Trevarrow said.

The team also used a desk chair, side chair, bookshelf and artwork from the Habitat for Humanity supply, and brought in additional items to complete the design.

“Our team is very strong in process development and programing phases of projects,” Trevarrow said.

“We take a lot of time to think about the project concepts and make sure to develop them fully before coming up with space planning ideas. We work well as a team seeing as we are open to ideas, and we collaborate very well.”

In addition to this team, one more team consisting of four interior design students contributed to this meaningful event. They were seniors Emily Marquette, Kellie Devries, Yue Gu, and Yajie Zhu.

The advisor for this competition was Suk-Kyung Kim, PhD, associate professor and program director of the Interior Design Program. She was also involved in organizing the competition.

“This was a very dynamic and interesting event to test our students’ creativity and problem-solving strategies. Students had to provide the best design solution within several hours. I am so proud of our students,” Kim said.

The Interior Design Program sponsored students’ participation in this competition, and the program will continuously support students’ participation in both national and international design competitions in the future.

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