Bridget Tipton
Utilizing a hybrid approach, students will employ a range of manual and digital methods of making. These new forms of ornament will carry social, political, and theoretical meaning. The studio will culminate in an exploration of a new Barbizon. Originally a women-only hotel built in 1927, the program will be reimagined for today. It is a maximalist, glamourous and aspirational space, at the intersection of personal and social importance.
Anna Anstine
The Muse: A New Barbizon
This paradox fueled the movement of taking back the muse by returning the word to its intended use of inspiring creation. This space will be to support female artist who work in New York. Keeping with the concept of being a women’s only hotel, the new Barbizon will support young female artists, specifically musicians, fine artists, dancers, and fashion designers, by providing residences catered to their lifestyles, as well as amenities to support their craft. This program includes specific residences for each type of artist, as well as music/recording studios, art studios, dance studios, and fashion textile creation spaces. There will also be a grand ballroom adjacent to the lobby, in addition to a bar, restaurants, a theatre, a gym, a library, and a garden.
Lillianna Aliberti
Middle Ground
Nestled in the heart of New York City, Middle Ground Hostel offers a haven of inclusivity and empowerment for women and non-binary travelers. The site gives solo travelers agency and provides a community for gender-nonconforming individuals. The site offers a combination of public and private spaces with distinct separation, ensuring the safety of hostel patrons.
Our communal spaces offer opportunities for connection and camaraderie, whether it’s through organized events or impromptu gatherings. Our coworking space buzzes with creativity, providing a dynamic environment for collaboration and productivity. Storefronts showcase local artisans’ crafts and products, fostering a sense of community support. Surrounding interiors loudly celebrate the feminine form and create a sense of home for anyone who may enter. From the moment you step through the doors, you’ll find a welcoming environment designed to uplift and inspire.
Lauren Reckner
Barbizon: Age of Aquarius
Gushing with moxie and radiating pure adrenaline, the Barbizon is an infectious creature with a mind of its own. Innovators, creatives, philosophers, and cultural icons dive into the Barbizon headfirst looking to find inspiration and express themselves in a space with all the grotesqueness of pure excess. Barbizon is for the creative radicals, the controversial, and anyone mentally floating in outer space.
The heart of the Barbizon pounds to the beat of an experimental dance track pulsing through the walls of its three-level club. Squishy, icky, and bejeweled curtains create a cave-like experience in the upper-level private sections, perfect for vampires and supermodels alike.
When the late-night turns into day, partygoers slink downstairs for brunch. The aroma of slow-smoked meats fills the air, paired with bloody marys and pastries. Servers glide up and down from the main kitchen located on the seventeenth floor, connected by separate service elevators.
Each residential floor has three two-person suites, each with their own walk-in closet and full bath. Finishes are funky, modern, and expensive. At the center of each floor is a content room; a space where guests can record podcasts, make tik toks, or film youtube videos. The distinct, startling backdrop of this room tells each viewer: THIS IS THE BARBIZON, relaying an iconic, mystifying aura through an iPhone screen.
A wonka-esque dreamscape, the Barbizon’s designer rental floor is a fashionista’s heaven. Rentable runway clothes can be checked in and out to wear during your stay. An AI inventory monolith looms in front of the fitting rooms, helping residents locate specific pieces and recommending items. Workers bustle back and forth from the busy back of house to the needy customers. The faint hum of dry cleaning machines can be heard from the sorting room, where clothes are cleaned and returned to the floor.
Jill Lahrmer/Mike Thomas
This studio encourages students to develop projects balancing the creative utilization of interior design methods with other aligned professions or interests, imagining projects on the fringe of interior design. Students are encouraged to use design-thinking, research, exploration, and professional networking to develop the theoretical basis for their work. Throughout the studio a strong emphasis will be placed on writing, sketching, observation and iteration, allowing advanced students to explore the power of design to address a broad and diverse range of spatial and cultural problems.
Mya Mammana
On the Fringe of Interior Design - Kentucky Bourbon Trail...On The Road
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail®...On The Road creates an experience for the users to engage in a journey within a community. The main goals of this experience are to try bourbon from the distilleries on the trail, gather knowledge about the trail and bourbon pairings, and have a great time relaxing and gathering in a fun environment made from mobile pop-up spaces. The design will be created by re-purposing shipping containers to create a community of spaces at an outdoor space or an event venue. This experience on the road is set up as a journey to enjoy bourbon and food, buy merchandise, enjoy live music, and give back to the community you are visiting through donations.
Ronn Daniel
In this moment of con-artist politicians, AI-manipulated videos, lip-synching holograms, and “augmented” realities, an era in which so many prior certainties about identification and authenticity wither, what is the status of the fake and forgery today?
This was an advanced studio for 4th-year undergraduate students. It was speculative and theoretically focused. In February we traveled to Las Vegas to study the cultures of spectacle and simulation. Each student was asked to develop their own program, site (in Las Vegas), theoretical goals, and representational strategies. Students were encouraged to engage in design “problem seeking.”
Tiffany Chang
(Mis)state of Affairs: Delaminating State Identification Practices
The materialized identification document is a manufactured, invented, fictionalized, yet affirmative truth. It is representative of a social condition, as a practice of the real and the fake. This method of social control is fabricated and maintained through layers upon layers of regulators.
The Supreme Court of Nevada in Las Vegas is a place that controls identification as a practice. Beyond its programmatic function, the building’s facade is akin to the layers of identification documents it aims to regulate; a byproduct of “thickening”. From the Library of Congress inspirations to stone veneer appliqués, the “thickness” exposes itself through various glitches and stutters.
The practice of identification is at risk of destabilization. Multiplicities, duplication, and the accumulation of documents are additive “costumes” of identity that threaten authenticity. Counterfeits for “good” and state-sanctioned misalignments are mishaps; slip-ups of the practice. To what extent are identification documents innocuous? What does it mean to be counted, filed, remembered, numbered, or lost?
This project aims to uncover the fragility and fragmented reality of identification practices by developing a “second skin” facade through the delamination of identification documents. Using principles of screen printing and printmaking techniques of authentication, the “side door” condition is understood as a necessary, grafted counterpart to the “front door” procurement of identification documents. This project materializes a demonized slippage; a fugitive space for the undocumented alien, a person without administrative validation.
Stefan Kuljanin
WUNDERKAMMER
The city of Las Vegas is consumed by illusions and aspirations of a time that has never existed. The most real thing a tourist can do in Las Vegas is die to the extreme climate to the hand of mother nature. A one mile sixteen foot deep strip is carved into the earth, on the edge Las Vegas and the Mojave desert. A quarter mile apart three dormant ethereal follies sit. The follies will act as wunderkammers that will house physical and digital wonders. Some real, some fake, and some in between. The site will ask people of today, yesterday, and tomorrow to wonder at, wonder if, wonder what, wonder when, and what is and was real.
