Students from the program have spent the last several months learning how to tap even deeper into their "inner creative junkies" as they’ve remodeled the entire Interior Design department by restoring repurposed materials. Nearly every material was either used and donated or purchased second-hand in an effort to teach the students what it's really like to work within a client's budget, which the student's discovered quickly was fun but hard work.
From the beautiful, new, hand-painted concrete flooring all the way up to the custom-made light fixtures, these students have done all of the hands-on cutting, sawing, drilling, painting, reupholstering, stenciling, and creating from start to finish and we here at BATC think that their hard work has been well worth it.
They've taken the classrooms from looking like this:
And literally turned them into works of art like this:
What have the students learned? To think outside the box.
Each student had the challenge of taking the old adage, "one man's junk is another man's treasure" and putting it into action. So, from egg cartons to Mason® jars, from second-hand furniture to random scraps of wood, each student brought their own personality to the remodel project as they created a beautiful environment to inspire not only themselves, but also future BATC students.
"Any sort of thing that people usually throw away or think of as junk can always be used in a new or creative way," says student Avery Skelley, as she and fellow student Allison Michie proudly sat at the new tables the've built. "Repurposing helps create one-of-a-kind pieces that you wouldn't find anywhere else, that you can just buy at the store,", Allison adds. "It's unique to the space."
Overall, the project has drawn lots of attention from on and around campus as students have been able to build their portfolios through this experience. "This has been a hands-on experience; real-life designing. They experienced taking it from paper to a real-life setting and getting the skills and experience necessary to have an idea that you present to a client come to life in a real-life form," says instructor Anna Merrill who, along with other BATC instuctors, helped oversee the project. "Sometimes you have a client with a large budget, where they can afford anything you present to them; but [through this experience], the students have developed the skill-set where they could be resourceful when they don't have much of a budget to work with."
For more information about the Interior Design program, visit http://www.batc.edu/programs/interior-design.