
Featured Graduates
These featured works showcase a general perspective of interior design projects and solutions. The program allows students to further their research interests and to refine their own design processes.
Zoohee Choi
sustainability, healthcare, evidence-based design | Zoohee’ research interests include sustainability in the built environment, Indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and healthcare design. Her thesis research interests are to develop the healthcare evaluation methods and indicator to refine field tools for capturing building IEQ especially those that may contribute to patients’ well-being and satisfaction.
Xiaoyu (Esther) Wang
sustainable design, occupants’ well-being, educational environment |Esther’s MFA thesis and design project aim to remodel Yue-Kong Pao Hall at Purdue University focusing on students’ well-being. She conducted interviews and a survey using a self-administered questionnaire in order to understand users’ needs to improve their well-being in lecture classrooms, design studios, a lobby, and a lounge area.
Barb Young
context, experience, empowerment | Barb explores the way we experience and interpret interior space. Barb believes in creating spaces which respond, responsibly, to specific users, their needs, history, and context. Her project work seeks to engage the community of users, empowering them through a participatory process for design. Barb’s current research and design work employ these convictions for the design of education spaces.
Chen Zheng
interior design, design flexibility, makerspace |Chen’s MFA project is aimed to explore the physical and social qualities that encourage people to gather in third places, specifically makerspaces. In his research, possible design preferences and solutions were investigated to integrate both attachment and functions to those places.