Features

Two rising seniors in the College’s BFA Interior Design: Built Environments program, Seungbin Jeong and Minxuan Zhong (Claire), have been named 2025 recipients of the esteemed Angelo Donghia Foundation’s Student Scholarship in Interior Design. One of the most coveted honors in the field, the award grants each student $30,000 toward their final year of undergraduate study—an investment in their futures, and in socially responsive design that both are already pursuing with conviction and imagination.

The Donghia Foundation scholarship is a career-defining honor for emerging interior designers, awarded annually to over a dozen juniors nationwide. Unlike many competitions, it requires physical submission boards, challenging students to showcase their work with tactile precision. With only two nominees allowed per school, Jeong and Zhong’s dual win highlights SVA’s ongoing leadership in the field.

“This is not your typical student competition,” said Carol Bentel, chair of the BFA Interior Design: Built Environments program, who worked closely with both students. “Seungbin and Claire put in an extra month of development after the semester ended. That level of dedication, the clarity of their ideas, and the maturity of their design research were the qualities that carried their work forward.”

Jeong’s Domino Vivo envisions adaptable housing for Dominican migrants in New York City, inspired by the cultural significance of dominoes—a game rooted in connection and rhythm. Like domino tiles branching outward, the modular design reflects the evolving journey of migration and the need for community and belonging.

Set along Manhattan’s West Side waterfront across from Little Island, the project blends domestic comfort with informal gathering spaces. Jeong describes it as “architecture as social choreography,” emphasizing resilience, adaptability, and a sense of place shaped by movement and memory.

Zhong’s Teguh Hive reimagines a hotel for Indonesian migrant workers as a space of safety, dignity, and support. Inspired by Indonesia’s Banjar community and honeycomb geometry, the design uses Voronoi patterns to create modular, interconnected housing units like cells in a hive. “Each unit is a cell—private, yet deeply connected,” Zhong said. The project combines structural and symbolic strength, offering a network of healing rooted in shared rituals and cultural resilience, making Teguh Hive both shelter and a spiritually affirming space.

With the addition of Jeong and Zhong, SVA’s Interior Design program now boasts 17 recipients of the prestigious Donghia Foundation scholarship. Past winners include Morgan Jourdin (2024), Hwanil Chang and Hyun Jung Park (2020), and Lucie Meichun Cai and Stephanie Chan (2017), reflecting a two-decade legacy of design excellence.

Domino Vivo and Teguh Hive originated in a junior studio centered on migrant housing, where students transformed in-depth research and personal stories into responsive architectural proposals. Both projects are featured in the ECC Venice Biennale’s exhibition at Palazzo Bembo, underscoring how SVA’s BFA Interior Design: Built Environments program continues shaping designers who merge cultural insight with forward-thinking, socially driven design.