Designing Future Interiors

“Designing Future Interiors” is the second installment of the Future Interiors series, a key annual event hosted by the Interior Design program at the New York Institute of Technology. This year’s symposium delves into the evolving landscape of interior design practice and offers a platform for innovative discussions, drawing together practitioners, researchers, and educators to explore diverse methodologies and design approaches to shaping interior environments. Focused on design research and the future of interior design, this event will highlight the interdisciplinary connections that define contemporary interior design practice, from sustainability and technology integration to new spatial concepts and user-centered design strategies. Presentations and moderated discussions will investigate how emerging design research and practice, such as sustinable materials, virtual environments, collaborative design practices among others are influencing interior design, challenging traditional paradigms, and providing new opportunities for the profession. As the second of its kind, this symposium continues to build on the legacy of the previous year, offering a dynamic forum for students, faculty, and professionals to engage in meaningful exchange and envision the future of interior design. 

This event will also host the launch of Interiorscapes, the first magazine of the Interior Design program at the New York Institute of Technology. The magazine aims to capture research on the history of interiors from all over the world and across all eras, gathering in a single volume a multiplicity of perspectives directed towards the interior worlds of our species. The magazine’s goal is to develop a collective research path that emphasizes the role of interiors beyond the architecture that contains them. Interiorscapes Vol. 0 collects the final essays produced by students in the History and Theory of Interior Design path, taught by prof. Francesca Romana Forlini in the Spring 2024. First and third year BFA students from the courses History of Interiors I and II, and Design Theory: History and Contexts contributed and will contribute to this yearly publication. 

Speaker 1 : Gia Wolff Design Director and Owner of Gia Wolff Studio

Speaker 2 : Esther Beke Founder and Design Director of Studio Fronde, Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute’s Industrial Design Department

Speaker 3 : Michele Gorman Director of MFA Interior Design and Professor at Parsons School of Design, The New School

Speaker 4 : Andrew Dent, Ph.D. EVP of Research Material ConneXion

Speaker 5 : Varun Kohli, FAIA LEED AP Principal & Director of Sustainability, Corgan 

Speaker Bio 1 : Gia Wolff is known for her interdisciplinary approach to design through the frameworks of architecture, environments, and installations. 

Based in Brooklyn, New York, she leads Studio Gia Wolff, a design practice creating multi-scale projects from residential interiors to masterplans, site-specific experiences to urban interventions, gallery installations to large-scale curatorial collaborations.

In 2013, Wolff won the prestigious Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize for Floating City: The Community-Based Architecture of Parade Floats. This groundbreaking research into the ephemeral architecture of carnival continues to inspire her projects through the exploration of mobility, temporality, and collective identity.

As Studio Gia Wolff, she is a frequent collaborator of world-renowned curator Claire Tancons. Together, they have completed projects for the Tate Modern, Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Faena District in Miami Beach. Other prolific partnerships have included projects with Brooklyn-based Freecell Architecture, for acclaimed clients in the creative industries. 

Wolff has taught at Princeton School of Architecture, Cooper Union, and Pratt Institute, and lectured internationally. Wolff is a champion of discovering architecture’s fringe interests, where design intersects with art, research, performance – and, most importantly, people. 

Speaker Bio 2 : Esther Beke is the Founder and Design Director of Studio Fronde and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute’s Industrial Design Department. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design and a Master’s in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Before founding Studio Fronde in 2022, Esther spent a decade as co-leader of 4|MATIV, an interior design and architecture studio where she worked on a wide range of projects, including-award winning educational spaces, Maple Street School and Mi Casita Pre-school and Cultural Center. Her design practice is rooted in honesty, communication, function and beauty in the experience she creates to enhance people’s lives. Years of observation, experience and creative development ultimately led Esther to establish her own design practice, Studio Fronde.  

Speaker Bio 3 : Michele Gorman is the Director of the MFA Interior Design Program and a Professor of Interiors, Objects, and Technologies at Parsons School of Design, The New School. She has focused on inclusive design education and interdisciplinary collaboration.

As a designer and technologist, Michele has created award-winning multimedia objects, exhibitions, and interior spaces for clients including the Public Theater, Target, Parsons at The New School, and Green-Wood Cemetery. Her work explores social and environmental justice, particularly in response to climate change. She co-foundedThe Radically Inclusive Studio, advocating for equity in design education and the profession, and co-designed Embracing Kinship: Interconnected Interiors in the Metaverse, examining AI, belonging, and virtual spaces.

Michele’s global workshops and research initiatives, such as the Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party Talks + Workshops, foster dialogue on decolonization and sustainability. She champions interdisciplinary, collaborative, and radically inclusive approaches to design

Speaker Bio 4 : Dr. Andrew Dent, EVP of Materials Research at Material ConneXion and Chief Material Scientist at Material Bank, is known for his integrated approach to problem solving. 

One of the world’s leading authorities on materials in design, Andrew has helped clients from start-ups and Fortune 500 companies take their products and spaces to the next level through innovative material selection and a unique cross-industry perspective.  

Co-author of the Material Innovation book series published by Thames & Hudson, and a frequent speaker on sustainable material strategies at events such as TEDxGrandRapids and TEDNYC, Dr. Dent is ever ready to solve design problems with unexpected material solutions.

Speaker Bio 5 : A fierce advocate for environmental and social sustainability, Varun creates and implements integrated design processes for significant projects globally. His meticulous approach purposefully dissolves the boundaries between built, human, and natural ecosystems.   

An industry leader, Varun has contributed to major architecture firms as well as his own Studio in New York, integrating environmental analytics and sustainable design ranging from urban scale resiliency and decarbonization to major commercial, education, aviation, and mixed-use development projects, both domestically and internationally. As the Director of Sustainability at Corgan, Varun provides firm-wide leadership on climate and sustainability topics. With a focus on integrating environmental sensitivities in design, Varun collaborates with Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (CEA) researchers on novel pedagogical models for environmental design and has taught courses at Harvard GSD and RPI (CASE). He recently authored a chapter in Energy Modeling in Architecture; A practice guide, published by RIBA and currently serves on the board of ‘Pokhrama Foundation,’ working to build a net-zero school to provide K-12 education in a remote region of northern India. 

Introduction 1 : Florencia Vetcher 

Introduction 2 : Francesca Romana Forlini 

Moderator 1 : Francesca Romana Forlini

Moderator 2 : Florencia Vetcher