Interior design (ID) is responsible for the human condition leveraging our place in culture beyond the physical context through an empathic response that addresses the needs and values of “the other”. As academics and scholars, we have the responsibility to create new pedagogical approaches that advance the profession and introduce students to an expanded field of interior design to benefit those historically ensnared at the periphery of society. Service-Learning-Projects (SLP) operate at the forefront of these pedagogical approaches. Faculty and senior students from a Public Research I university in the USA partnered with “Kids at Hope” (KH), a national organization that aims to shift the stereotypical perception of children “at risk” to one of children “at hope”, and a local public high school who partnered with them- Hope Career Academy (HCA). This collaboration between 7 ID students, KH, and 100 high school students from a Title-I-school, explored how the concept of “interiority”, first conceptualized by Perollini (2011), can be applied to develop empathy in design education. A participatory co-design process with underrepresented youth informed a funded design-build SLP, result of students’ active listening and empathic response. Design students contested and negotiated their original aspirations for the studio, through constructing and deconstructing their notions of hope, empathy and interiority. By attempting to expand the discipline beyond indoor spaces and theorize that an empathic response can activate social change, this studio explored “Interiors as an abstract noun”. This paper introduces an unconventional ID studio process and discusses students learning outcomes.
Associate Professor Milagros Zingoni-Phielipp is the Director of the School of Interior Architecture and the Director of Diversity Relations at the College of Architecture and Design at the University of has taught in Architecture, interior design, interior architecture and Urban Design. She was recognized for her teaching with the 2019 IDEC Teaching Excellence Award, the 2019 AIA Educator of the Year Award (AZ), and for the 2020 ASU Faculty Mentor Award.
Zingoni is originally from Argentina, where she is a registered architect, and she has extensive service in the USA and Argentinian communities, pro