May 6, 2021
Future100: Students Make Leaps in Industrial Design
Investigating everything from new social norms to biophilia, industrial and product design students make their mark at the object scale.
With a year defined by quarantines and physical distancing, the new ways we engage with one another and the natural world are informing student industrial designs that warrant a closer look. For one scholar, new social norms manifest as seating engineered to explore the duality of love and separation. Others bring in the outdoors with items inspired by flora, fauna, and the ecosystems that sustain us.
Visit metropolismag.com/future100 to see more groundbreaking student work.
NORA ALKEYAT
Ryerson University
Undergraduate Interior Design
NOMINATOR: Jonathon Anderson, Associate Professor, Director of FCAD Creative Technology Lab
Chrysalis, a project designed with classmate Paul Lee, is a lighting fixture designed to emulate the natural process of cocoon building. Using digital fabrication techniques, Alkeyat’s biophilic design mimics the layered, meshlike forms produced by insect larvae.
HANNAH KOCH
University of Minnesota
Undergraduate Interior Design
NOMINATOR: Meghan Hendrickson, Professional Instructor
A finalist in the University Hall of Innovation’s By Design Single Sheet Plywood Challenge, Koch’s fixture Sun on the Ridge references the way light cascades down a mountain peak. With a passion for hospitality and sustainable design, Koch’s portfolio encompasses a diverse set of projects including a veteran living community and an adaptive reuse hotel.
NICOLE WOLERT
New York Institute of Technology
Undergraduate Interior Design
NOMINATOR: Gertrudis Brens, Director of Interior Design
Inspired by the natural world, Wolert often incorporates organic forms in works such as The Orchid Collection, which includes a lamp, settee, stool, chair, and table. Her proposal for a three-story headquarters for Teavana is an abstracted section of an old-growth tree from root to crown.
AMY YAN
Ryerson University
Undergraduate Interior Design
NOMINATOR: Jonathon Anderson, Associate Professor, Director of FCAD Creative Technology Lab
Yan’s work operates at “the intersection of design and storytelling.” She has applied her narrative approach to spatial problems in projects such as an ethnocultural investigation into Toronto’s Chinatowns. The Not Love Seat was awarded first place in Wilsonart’s Annual Student Chair Design Competition.
You may also enjoy “From Victorian Gardens to Corporate Biophilia, Nature Inside Unearths a History of Interior Plantings”
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