Gasp! by Harrington College of Design

by brendan on November 18th, 2009

I am happy to say that after three weeks of very hard work and at least two sleepless nights we created a unique dining space that shows the true creativity of an interior designers mind. The Harrington College of Design team, Megan Klock, Kevin Scott, Tomas Alvarez and myself really wowed the design industry at this years Dining by Design event to benefit DIFFA. (Design Industry Foundation Fighting AIDS) The design concept really came from the image seen on the back wall of Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl. We extracted the idea of the waves and translated them into the wall panels which we repeated to give depth. From there we were lucky enough to borrow the table and chairs from the Vallcucine showroom located on the first floor of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. W saw the chairs and were really lucky that they had them availiable for use in the space. Also, my good friends over at Speakers and Events-R-Us allowed us to use the blue spot lights that really painted our space with color.

The flooring came from an architectural glass suppy company and are actually repurposed 1′x1′ samples mixed with white porceline tile we purchased at Lowes. One of my favorite details is the place setting which was mostly purchased at World Market and Ikea. The plates are actually two of the same style laying next to one another to create a wave shape. The napkin is a simple white cotton with a blue ribbon placed over the top. The glasses are three shades of blue and although they are petite they really work as a low glass giving the print in the background the attention. The lights that are on the table are actually drinking glasses that have shot glasses inside of them that house blue and white LEDs we found in the camping section at Home Depot.

Overall I think the process went rather smoothly and I’m looking forward to what next years team brings to the table. If I had to give any advice to a team considering being apart of Dining By Design I would say nail down the concept from the beginning and elect a project manager who will responsibly hand out tasks, listen to opinions and make the necessary decisions in order to see the design to completion. My favorite comment of the event came from an older designer who compared the space to one of Valentino’s gowns featured in his documentary The Last Emperor. Not exactly what we were going for but I’ll take it. To see more images of the space check out Klick_It’s Photostream on Flickr.