Interior Scholarship – the AIT Scholarship of the Sto Foundation 2018/2019

The AIT and Sto Foundation scholarships are awarded to interior design students for their ideas and creative ways of thinking. In the academic year 2018/2019, the Interior Scholarship, endowed with a total of 24,000 euros, is awarded to Stella Josefine Funk (RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden), Juliane Glaser (Mainz University of Applied Sciences), and Carlijn Olde Beverborg (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam).

Uwe Koos, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sto Foundation and Kristina Bacht, Publishing Director AIT-Dialog, spoke with the four students.

Stella, what inspires you in particular in your interior design studies and what will change for you as a result of the scholarship?

Stella: I am particularly enthusiastic about the diversity of my studies. From historical background knowledge to manual work, everything is included. Most subjects are very practice-oriented. Working on different projects with different materials is simply fun. And the fact that the number of students is limited creates an intensive working atmosphere in small groups. The professors and lecturers are closely involved in the development process and show a genuine interest in the students' personal and professional development. The monthly support from the Interior Scholarship helps me tremendously. In addition to my intensive studies, I also earn my living in a company as a furnishing consultant and design custom-made wooden furniture. Of course, this takes a lot of time and leaves hardly any opportunity to work on study-related things at the same time. The scholarship allows me to reduce my working hours with a good conscience. This gives me more time and motivation to invest in my student tasks. Since I would like to do an internship between my Bachelor's and Master's degrees, the financial support is a great blessing, which might even enable me to do an internship abroad.

All in all, I am incredibly proud and very grateful that I have been awarded the AIT Scholarship of the Sto Foundation.

Juliane, what do you associate with interior design and what are your plans for the time following your studies?

Juliane: I primarily associate interior design with material, light, space, social structures, and atmosphere. Of all this, I am particularly fascinated by atmosphere. It's a term I don't quite understand yet, although I work with it every day. As a result of studying interior design, I perceive my surroundings quite differently. When I travel or go for a short walk along the Rhine or through the city, I try to understand why some spaces function, some places fail, and certain compositions exude such an attraction. In addition, I have always had the naive thought of doing something good for the world and I think that I can do this in a modest way by creating spaces where people move and which have to find their place in nature. After my master's degree, I would like to work in an architectural office for a while to enhance my intuition with experience. Preferably only for four days a week, so that I have time for my own projects. I would like to spend some time working in project management in order to be able, after two to three years, to start my own business as an interior designer. In addition, I can very well imagine realizing not only spatial concepts, but also individual products and urban interventions.

Carlijn, your declared objective is to set up your own design studio after your studies in order to best implement your political and sociological concepts and ideas. How can the Interior Scholarship support you with this?

Carlijn: The design studio I want to set up should serve as a platform where different disciplines such as art and design come together, for example in the combination of film, music, interior design, and interactive design. To achieve this goal, I want to use the next year to work with and learn from young Dutch designers and artists. If I succeed in finding the right people and combining their skills with mine, it can create a strong unity of different design disciplines. If I make the necessary preparations for the creation of this platform in the last year of my Master's programme, I could start implementing projects immediately after completing my studies. With the support of the scholarship, this goal would be easier to achieve. In my second year of studies, I would be financially independent and I could already work with companies that produce my work in a professional manner. With the scholarship backing me, the design scene will also take my work more seriously and working with companies will improve both my handling of materials and my business skills. Driven by my ambition and my entrepreneurial instinct, I can hardly wait to discover the industrial design sector.