Hillier College Alumni, Student Work Featured in Milestone Design Showcase Event
The Hillier College of Architecture and Design (HCAD) kicked off its year-long celebration of two very important milestones – the 50th year anniversary of the New Jersey School of Architecture and the 15th anniversary of the School of Art & Design.
The Design Showcase is the college’s flagship fundraising and networking event, which provides a chance for members of the Hillier College community to connect personally and professionally. This year’s event took place in the Jewel Box of One Gateway Center in downtown Newark, made possible by Onyx Equities.
“As a scholar of New Jersey's distinctive landscapes, it's fair to say that another great pleasure of serving as interim dean is traveling across the Garden State to meet with so many of you, where you live and work,” said Gabrielle Esperdy, interim dean and professor of architecture at HCAD. “That's what this evening is all about, it's an opportunity to say thank you, and to strengthen our bonds with each other, whether our relationships are personal, professional or collegiate, and I'm assuming that most of them are some combination of all three.”
The Design Showcase also serves as an important philanthropic event, providing benefactors with a rare opportunity to intimately discover how students, faculty and the college are taking advantage of enhancements in curriculums and facilities. Previous showcases have raised funds to support improvements of the fabrication facilities, including animation and 3D print labs, a motion capture studio, a digital fabrication lab featuring a robotic arm and VR technology to enrich interactive design.
The gala celebrated student and alumni accomplishments in architecture, interior design, industrial design and digital design.
The four alumni award honorees were Pamela Ospina ‘18 who received the Emerging Designer Award, Ken Colao ‘77 was awarded the Friend of the Hillier College Award, Robert Cozzarelli ‘79 received the distinguished alumni in leadership award and Jak Inglese ‘79, ‘95 was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Impact Award.
“As we celebrate this special time in the college's history, it seems fitting to present these inaugural awards, which recognizes an outstanding group of alumni and dedicated volunteers for their talent, their vision, their professional achievements and exemplary service to NJIT and the greater community in Newark and globally,” said President Teik C. Lim. “I want to emphasize globally because we educate global professionals.”
“For 50 years, the college has produced innovative leaders, thinkers and makers who not only engage the most difficult challenges of our time, but also envision, design and build the most just and sustainable futures. I am proud to be part of this vibrant community of scholars that look forward to the next fifty years of inspiration, vision and creativity,” he added.
Best in Show
A major component of the design showcase is the student competition, which awards student projects in the different undergraduate disciplines within HCAD: architecture, interior design, industrial design and digital design.
Industrial Design - Jennifer Mikulko
“Living Stones” by industrial design student Jennifer Mikulko is a two-in-one light fixture lamp, which allows the user to select default colors or customize their ambiance by selecting a color for the inside and another color for the outside of the light fixture. The lamp can be used as a pendant or flush against the ceiling.
With user customization and experience in mind, Mikulko chose aurora, canyon, lava and reef as the four colors.
“I plan to keep designing and making new products that will help enhance people's lives and hopefully go into manufacturing and designing modern products,” she said.
Digital Design - Megan Krutz
“IDLE” by digital design student Megan Krutz is a 3D short film that looks to answer the question that grows more and more common as technology advances: “What will the world look like once AI has outlasted humanity?”
Krutz worked on this film with the guidance of Pascal Chaumette during her internship with Neo-Pangea in the Fall.
“My dream forever, and still is to work in television animation,” said Krutz, an Albert Dorman Honors College student. “Honestly when I grew up, I wanted to do 2D like cartoons that you would see on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. Streaming services are changing that dynamic now, so now that I have found an unlikely love of 3D, I'm definitely more open to doing more 3D jobs. I'm trying to find a balance between my original love of 2D and my new love of 3D now.”
Haylee Merola - Interior Design
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a 2020 science fiction novel by Christopher Paolini. The story follows xenobiologist Kira on her journey through the cosmos, fighting both aliens and humans alike in an attempt to save herself and ensure the survival of the human race.
Merola, an Albert Dorman Honors College student, was part of a collaborative sci-fi entertainment studio and their main goal was to create a presentation and trailer that would act as a movie pitch and marketing release.
“My project To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is for a Collaborative Design Studio. I worked with two digital design majors and one industrial design major, so all of the work in the booklet that I presented was my part of the project,” said Merola. “The novel was something we read through, annotated, pulled out what we wanted to design. We had a movie trailer that was a pitch to a production company to make this novel into a film. I was in charge of environments and spaceships, so I got to do something completely out of left field for what I'm used to in interior design. It was really cool, and my group was wonderful to work with.”
Nairi Arslan - Architecture
“Four Freedoms Museum” by Nairi Arslan earned the best in show award for architecture with her design of the museum located in Roosevelt Island. The museum is in the context of significant historic landmarks such as the Small Pox Memorial and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial.
The Cafesjian Center for the Arts, located in Yerevan, Armenia, was used as a formal and conceptual precedent. In the interior, four galleries represent the “four essential human freedoms,” freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, written in Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address.
