Austin Yang’s Grace chair won the Editor’s Award for seating at ICFF 2014
Good design has its rewards. In the case of Environmental Design students Haidy Gong and Austin Yang, reward comes in the form of $30,000 in scholarship support from the Angelo Donghia Foundation. Gong and Yang are among only 12 winners of the 2014 Student Scholarship Program in Interior Design, which gives awards to rising college seniors pursuing bachelor degrees. We checked in with the winners to get their reaction to the scholarship and to find out what makes for an award-winning design.
Design by Haidy Gong
Art Center: Congratulations to you both for winning the 2014 Senior Scholarship. How did you learn you’d won and what were your reactions?
Austin Yang: I got back from school at 2:00 a.m. and checked my mailbox and saw the letter from New York with Donghia Foundation on the envelope and suddenly got nervous. I opened it and found out I’d won. I called my parents and told them. They were so happy. Then I noticed that my friend Haidy was also a winner. I called and told her about the award. We were both so excited and couldn’t sleep.
Haidy Gong: I was in Berlin for study abroad at the time, so I didn’t learn that I’d won until I heard from Austin. I was excited not only because I’d won but also because winning together with Austin made it special.
AC: What does the award mean to you?
HG: It was a big encouragement. Seeing other Art Center students’ projects that are so awesome and beautiful, I sometimes feel I lack confidence. This award made me feel proud of myself and made me believe in myself more.
AY: The scholarship is a huge honor. We were competing with students from design and architecture schools from across the U.S. It’s a big recognition of my academic work and it confirmed for me that coming to Art Center was the right decision.
AC: Tell us a little about your award-winning designs.
HG: My project, a hotel, was part of a studio class with instructor Emil Mertzel. We chose a brand and created a hospitality design for it. I chose the fashion brand Chloe. My concept, “tension, passion and hurt of love,” was inspired by the creator’s love story. Based on this concept, I did some form explorations and started to apply the form language to the space.
AY: My design was also for one of Emil’s classes. It’s a restaurant that examines the gastronomic experience through the construction of thematic conceptual structure to create a singular dining phenomenon for the chef Ollie Dabbous. Each of Dabbous’ dishes is modeled after a specific scene in nature, both in taste and appearance. I chose to design my restaurant after one of nature’s most moving images, the Grand Canyon. The restaurant is designed to make people feel they are traveling to a new world deep within the Arizona desert.
AC: How has what you’ve learned at Art Center enabled you to solve problems?
AY: The Environmental Design program taught me how to design space with a narrative in mind. Most of our studio courses let us develop story first. Before I start designing I always have a concept that ensures the project is not going to be just another cool building with no reason behind it.
HG: Another key to good design is asking the right questions. Who is the demographic? Are the design and the materials right? I ask a million questions every day. It’s important to always push myself.
AC: Have you found your creative voice?
AY: I’m still exploring. I didn’t have any design background when I first came to Art Center. I was like a blank sheet of paper. I’m trying almost every class offered in the Environmental Design department—exhibition design, branding, park design, restaurant design, boutique and furniture design. I’m still finding the areas that interest me the most.
HG: We really get to experience everything and decide what we like. And the instructors are very encouraging and give us freedom to design what we want and give us the help we need.
AY: One of the biggest surprises for me at Art Center has been just how helpful and generous the faculty have been. Emil Mertzel, the instructor for this project, is so knowledgeable, and I want to express my thanks to him for the time he put into helping with my project, and to all my other instructors who helped me develop my skill set.
