SPOKANE, Wash. — Washington State University Spokane faculty members Matt Melcher and Nancy Clark Brown, with local designer Juliet Sinisterra, won Best in Show for interior design at the 2001 Interior Design Educators Council International Conference.
The award was given for their work on an office space in the Holley-Mason Building. The project also received last fall the American Institute of Architects Spokane Chapter’s Honor Award, the highest award granted by AIA. It, too, will be cited in the Journal of Interior Design.
Melcher and Sinisterra, co-owners of iDR Studio, led the project that reconstructed the Holley-Mason Building space into a comfortable and artistically unique investment firm office. Clark Brown did the lighting design.
Melcher also incorporated the project into a course taught spring semester 2000. The design students learned firsthand about the design and construction process of an award-winning project.
“Students have responded very positively to having exposure to ‘real-life’ projects as a part of their learning experience at WSU Spokane,” says Melcher. “The significance of this project was not that it received the award, but that it served as a vehicle for instruction at the (Interdisciplinary) Design Institute.”
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