Interior Architecture Faculty Reports

Anna Marshall-Baker and Tommy Lambeth will moderate a roundtable discussion, entitled "Interior Architecture Part 2," at the South Region Interior Design Educators Council conference at Auburn University in October.

Patrick Lee Lucas received news of his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure effective 1 August 2008. Congratulations all around!

Novem Mason moved out of his office – and that was no small feat! – with several decades of accumulated paperwork, student projects, and books, books, books! Novem graciously donated a career’s worth of books to the IARc library. As for the rest of the material, he made good use of several recycling carts and gave fellow faculty members valuable documents, some of which made us nostalgic for the days of ditto masters. Novem retired in May 2008 from IARC amidst a big student celebration, complete with an autographed drawing bench and delicious cake. Dean Laura Sims recognized Novem with a special award on the occasion of his retirement. A former department chair, Novem has been involved in all aspects of the IARc program and will be greatly missed for his wit and charm, not to mention his skill for making students think on their feet.

A record number of twenty-three fifth year students successfully pursued and completed their senior thesis projects under the direction of Suzanne Cabrera, Robert Michel Charest, and Patrick Lee Lucas. Projects spanned the breadth of design opportunities, including office retrofits, conference center, art galleries, student housing, retail spaces, churches, restaurants, an interactive playground space, a mobile food preparation station, and the redesign of the Weatherspoon Art Museum shop. The students demonstrated that good design can be everywhere, even under the pressure of an eight week summer session.

Urban studio moves forward with $505,000 in grants for my sisters' house. After an exploration studio (iar 302) in the spring semester 2008, Robert Michel Charest worked with a cadre of students over the summer to formalize drawings and specs. As of this [i]news, permits, licenses and design approvals are underway. As planned, the design-build will take place over the next three semesters in partnership with Guilford Technical Community College and several departments in the UNCG School of Human Environmental Sciences. With the goal of a "double-fast-track" build, part of the construction will take place on site and part in an off-site shop. A ceremonial ground breaking is scheduled for mid-September and my sisters' house should be ready for occupation in late 2009. Watch the [i]news for further developments.

Anna Marshall-Baker (faculty) serves as Coordinator for UNCG’s Center for Sustainability, helping to lead Focus the Nation, an initiative to study the impacts of global warming on the United States.

Suzanne Buchanan (faculty), along with several first and second year students, helped single teenage mothers to visualize their lives through active journaling and drawing in a special course/outreach during the Spring Semester 2008. “Advocacy through Design” represents one of the many ways that IARc finds its way into the community in providing service and in recognizing that we all are fundamentally connected through design.

Interior Architecture Student Reports

Brittany Devaney writes us from her study abroad in Florence, Italy(2008):
Ciao! So, as you know I'm in Florence and loving it. I arrived two weeks ago and it's all been great so far. I'm so lucky to have this opportunity.

I moved into my apartment a day after I arrived. I have four other roommates and I share a room with one of them. She is from Boston and we get along great. The other two roommates, that are sharing a room, are from Chicago and they grew up together, so they are good friends. One of my roommates has a single bedroom and she was here last semester. She has traveled all over the world, as her dad worked for United Airlines, so she is very helpful and informative about Florence, as well as all of Europe. Our apartment is actually quite spacious with 3 bedrooms, a bath, kitchen, and living room. It can be a little chilly since it's all stone but the radiators keep us warm throughout the night. In Italy there aren't any dryers in the apartments so we've been air drying all of our clothes. I can't wait till it's warmer outside so that we can hang our clothes from the clothes line that sits outside our window. We don't have a microwave so I've been getting very familiar with heating things on the stove and in the oven. The apartment is on the third floor of an old stone building, with only about 4 other apartments throughout. The apartment sits next to the Uffizi and a block from the Arno. I didn't realize we were so close to the Arno until the day I was walking around the city, trying to get familiar with the area and I immediately came upon the Ponte Vecchio. It's beautiful, I was so excited! I was sure to take some pictures.

I've made a day trip to Siena with a few friends a couple weekends ago. We took a train into the town and a bus from there. We spent the day walking throughout the streets and sitting in the Piazza del Campo. We took a tour of Siena Cathedral, which is amazing. It's unbelievable the amount of detail and work that goes into the architecture here.

This past week classes started. I have class Tuesday through Friday and I really enjoy all of them, as well as the teachers. They are here to teach us the material as well as their culture, so I learn a lot from them. I'm taking an Italian course, history course, design aesthetics course, Computer-Aided Drafting II, and a studio course, Display Design. My studio teacher is an architect here in Florence. On the first day of classes I confronted him about maybe having an opportunity to do an internship with his firm or another that he may know of for this summer. He is willing to help me, so we will see where it goes from here. In one of my courses we are taking a field trip to the large furniture show in Milan, which I'm looking forward too. As I walk to class, I walk right past the Duomo and it takes about 15-20 minutes from my apartment to the school. So, it's not a long walk at all. I can walk to the train station, which is on the other side of the city, in about 20-25 minutes. I didn't realize Florence was so small, it's very convenient.

The food here is quite delicious, as I'm sure you know. It's a good thing Italian food is my favorite. I've been trying to get an idea of where all the best food in Florence is. Having a roommate who was here last semester is helpful--she knows of them all.

For spring break I have arrangements to go to London for a few days and then to Paris. Do you have any suggestions of places that I should visit in London or Paris? As well as in Italy and all of Europe?

Now that classes have started and I'm all settled in, I'm starting to get on a schedule, which is nice. This past weekend, I bought a Uffizi pass that gives me access to all the museums throughout Florence. I look forward to using that throughout the semester. This past week has been rainy weather, so I've been stuck in the apartment. I didn't have classes today, and it was a beautiful sunny day, so I spent the day walking around the city.I stopped throughout and did some sketching and drawings. I plan to create a website that has all my sketches and displays my experiences through drawings. I will let you know of the website when I have it all figured out. I also have a website for all of my photos... Brittany Devaney

Working around the clock on 24-25 October, the UNCG IIDA Campus Center (our student chapter) organized a collaborative design/service project to further enrich their studies while impacting the local community. IARc students teamed with peers in the
Consumer Apparel and Retail Studies department to "Make a Difference" in Greensboro with a project to redesign the Salvation Army Family Store on Lee Street. With an all night design charrette, IIDA links to a national competition sponsored by the Interior
Design Educator's Council (IDEC) centered on community activism that encourages students to "make a difference" in their community. Concentrating on many aspects of the design, the students’ collective work will have a direct impact on the Lee Street location,
and provide direction for the organization's future facility in Northern Greensboro.

bringing new ideas to community service
IIDA Campus Center (the IIDA student chapter) will team with the Department of Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies to redesign the Greensboro Salvation Army store. Students will analyze existing retail and merchandising strategies, space use, store image, users, and safety issues to begin the project. This IIDA-sponsored project will be highlighted by a 12 hour charrette on Friday, October 24, 2008, 7pm - 7am. The Greensboro Salvation Army, led by Major Paul Egan, has partnered with Ivan Cutler, former IARC Advisory Board member and a strategic marketing specialist, to upgrade the existing store and to develop a new boutique type of store for north Greensboro.

Weaving new uses for old mills
Retail Retold students recently began a retail design project located at Revolution Mill in Greensboro. Check out students’ first reactions to the site and observations of the tour of the facility by Lynn Cowan, Christine Chapman (MS 2007) and Catherine Carter (BS 2007) on the class blog: retailretoldstudio.blogspot.com...

...De-Specialized Workspace students explore new ways of "working" by deconstructing the traditional office...the site: Highpoint’s Highland Mill (a 100, 000 sq. ft building now the home of Cisco Brothers Furniture showroom)...
...and in other third and fourth year (vertical) studios...students pursue a variety of projects: lustrous LED lighting design competition, shopping center and retail spaces in Hong Kong, and furniture design and product design.

Not forgetting their roles as conscientious designers, Amanda Wilson (fifth year), Caitlin Cunningham (fifth year), Debbie Nestvogel (fourth year), and Janel Graupensperger (fourth year) took the LEED certification exam this past summer and are now all LEED Accredited Professionals.

Historic preservation masters students celebrated a significant birthday – for the Korner’s Folly privy. Following the smell of piquant barbecue, more than fifty former students and friends to the privy headed to Kernersville for a down-home gathering to honor the efforts of many in stabilizing and re-roofing this important slice of North Carolina history. Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll, leading the revitalization efforts, has placed the privy as a memorable aspect to each summer field school (IAR/HIS555) since 2001.

Allison Conley (third year student), while studying abroad in France in the Spring Semester 2008, received a grant from Middlebury College to investigate sustainability practices in Paris as a point of comparison with those in the United States.

With funding from the Marion Stedman Covington Foundation, IARC joined forces in Spring Semester 2008 with Preservation North Carolina to fashion a series of digital resources on PNC’s website related to preservation issues and opportunities facing North Carolina.  Rachel Miller (MS 2008) served as the first of several graduate assistants in the historic preservation concentration of our graduate program who will assist with this important project.  Kate Zylstra (second year graduate student) continued in the position in summer 2008.

In Spring Semester 2008, seven fourth and fifth year students took to the world of work under the guidance of mentors in various Triad-area businesses and organizations.  We thank these employers for helping students to innovate as they make the transition from IARC to the world of work.
Michelle Bottenus                        Workplace Strategies
Kylene Costa                                One Design Center
McKenzie Gates                        Pixxelweave
Erin Hicks                                    Warren Architecture
Jessica Krasuski                        Habitat for Humanity
Aralynn McVey                        Habitat for Humanity/Americorp
Meaghan Riordan                        Brayton International

Students throughout the program shared their work through blogs in 2008 (an initiative started by Suzanne Buchanan…and a topic on which she and Tommy Lambeth presented at the March 2008 meeting of the National Council on the Beginning Design Student Conference in Atlanta).  The blogs continue a long tradition of utilizing digital media to bring iarc to the world, including our ever-changing web site.  See the addresses on the front page of our site.  

IARC students adopted a stream in Spring Semester 2008 in Peabody Park on UNCG’s campus as a place to demonstrate our commitment to keeping one part of the natural environment clear of debris. 

In the Spring Semester 2008, several studios engaged in hypothetical projects based on real world sites….and in the case of two projects with our partner, the YWCA of Greensboro….”real world” projects to benefit the Triad:  a new facility/community center for the Center for New North Carolinians (Suzanne Buchanan + Tommy Lambeth, faculty); urban studio o2 : my sisters' house, a home for single teenage mothers (Robert Michel Charest + Novem Mason, faculty); renovation of the Benjamin Branch Library (Patrick Lee Lucas, faculty); North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition (Robert Michel Charest, faculty); Greensboro Historical Museum Study + Analysis (Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll, faculty) and “Advocacy Through Design,” an eight-week course (Suzanne Buchanan, faculty; assisted by first and second year student volteers) to introduce teenage mothers to principles of drawing and graphic design, opportunities for careers in design, and ways in which they can use their talents to create an advocacy campaign.

Urban studio 01(2008) received the "Most Effective Housing Collaboration" Award for its 909 Dillard Street Project during the Greensboro Housing Coalition's  "Housing Summit", a yearly event, which took place on 17 January. The project will be featured in the upcoming March issue of Dwell magazine.