Interior Design Students Travel to Gensler in DC

Front Row from left: Katherine Shaw Gensler, Annette Jones Gensler Back Row from left: Instructor Amy Huber, Holly Franklin, Melanie Murata, Allison Keevan, Heather Dodd, Janet Pogue Gensler, Amanda Krueger, Lauren Trujillo, Amelia Cubbage, and Amanda Cleveland

The Advanced Visual Communications class spent their Spring Break in Washington DC. In lieu of traditional sightseeing the students had the unique opportunity to work staff from the Gensler DC office. Gensler is an integrated architecture, planning, and consulting firm with over 4000 professional over 46 offices. Students collaborated with the staff on videos documenting the student’s thesis research or project programming. During the trip they received feedback from media producers, interior designers, graphic designers, and design strategist exploring cutting edge methods on how to best communicate their ideas. At the end of the collaboration students presented their videos to designers in the DC office for feedback. Upon project completion the students will send their final videos to Gensler for dissemination via the firm’s intranet site. Students also met with Smithsonian Institute Media Specialists, attended a viewing of the film My Archi tect with lecture by its director Nathanial Kahn (son of architect Louie Kahn), attended a workshop on video storytelling, and met with Mariott’s Interior design manager and FSU alum Dionne Jefferson. The students remarked that the trip not only provided helpful feedback on their videos but also gave them with a sense of what it’s like to work in a large firm and receive helpful career advice.