FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – For the fourth time in five years, an interior design student in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas has been recognized with a $30,000 Senior Student Scholarship Award from the Angelo Donghia Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes design education.

Anna Arendt, from Bryant, was selected for the scholarship based on the project she submitted to the foundation.

The Donghia Foundation Inc. was established by the late Angelo Donghia, an internationally recognized interior design icon and source of inspiration to the design world. Among the foundation's purposes is the advancement of education in the field of interior design.

This scholarship is the largest, most prestigious award within interior design education. Arendt was among 15 students selected from a pool of 69 student projects from accredited universities in this year's competition.

Previous Fay Jones School recipients were Kelly Walsh in 2015 and Jessica Baker and Christine Wass in 2016.

"To have four winners since 2015 of the largest and most prestigious award in the nation for interior design speaks to the quality, dedication and hard work of all our faculty and students," said Carl Matthews, head of the Department of Interior Design.

Arendt, now in her fourth year of studies, is among winners from top design schools in North America. Nine of the 15 scholarship winners are from private art schools or universities, while the remaining six students are from publicly funded institutions.

The hospitality project for which Arendt won the competition was completed in a spring 2019 semester third-year design studio under the direction of Jennifer Webb, associate professor of interior design.

"Anna investigated the site of Stowe, Vermont, for her resort hotel project, and it is this deep understanding of place that allowed her to craft a sophisticated, contemporary solution grounded in history," Webb said. "More importantly, there is a complex understanding of space, building systems, program and human well-being that is grounded in her solution, though many will only see the beautifully conceptualized space."

Before Arendt started designing her ski resort project, she researched the history of Stowe to determine a concept for it.

"Often, I try to come up with concepts influenced by history and/or research because I feel like that is a great way to create meaning and connection to a space," she said.

In her research, she read about a few Swedish families who lived in Stowe and how they started crafting their own skis to get around town during a particularly snowy winter. Before that, skiing hadn't quite made its way to that part of the Northeast yet, so those families influenced the surge of popularity of winter sports in the town.

"My resort pays homage to those Swedish families and their skis through concept, form and materiality. I felt like, in this way, I was connecting visitors to the humble beginnings of skiing in Stowe," she said.

Arendt was pleased with how the full project came together and how continuous the interior was.

A rendering of a ski resort in Stowe, Vermont, designed by Anna Arendt.

"Every aspect of the interior came back to the original concept, which is usually what we aim for. The furniture and fixtures related back to the Swedish families, the forms related to the hand-crafted skis, and the wood related back to the local craftsmen," she said. "To me, my project was special because of how connected it was to the community and their history."

Margaret Selzer and Josi Chavez, both alumni of the Fay Jones School's interior design program, helped to craft the studio project from their own professional work. Selzer established her firm, River and Lime, in Denver, Colorado, and it specializes in hospitality and residential design in resort communities. Selzer (B.I.D. 2004) and Chavez (B.I.D. 2017) introduced the project to students when they visited Denver and Winter Park early in the spring semester, and they traveled to Fayetteville twice to provide feedback to students.

Arendt remembers first learning about architecture and design in third grade, when a book she was reading mentioned the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. She started to understand how meticulously detailed he was when designing both architecture and interiors.

"I never really stopped thinking about that, and I became even more interested in interior design when I started realizing how much it impacts every single person," she said. "As an interior designer, you have the power to decide how a space is going to affect people consciously and subconsciously, physically and emotionally."

When researching colleges during high school, Arendt kept reading compelling things about the Fay Jones School.

"After I got to visit Fayetteville and the campus, I could feel it was a place where I could grow and thrive," she said. "The community here is so great and welcoming."

Arendt said that she dedicates much of her time to working on projects in studio.

"Often, the creative process is not a linear one, so I spend a lot of time in the studio working and reworking the design until I'm happy with it," Arendt said. "And that's why design students tend to work such long hours. There's not one answer for anything, and it's up to the designer to determine the best solution for the challenge that we're presented. Through the years, I have come to learn that the more research I do before beginning a project, the more I will connect to the end result because I can tell that every aspect of the project came from a well-informed decision."

Arendt is also a student in the university's honors program. For her honors capstone project, she is researching designers who went to school for architecture but later decided to work in the fashion industry.

"After discovering that many of the very famous fashion designers of our time have degrees in architecture, I began wondering if the education provided by an architectural schooling contributed to their great success in the fashion industry," she said. "I've always been interested in how the many different areas of design interconnect and contribute to each other."

Interior design students in the Fay Jones School have a required study abroad component, as well as a required internship the summer before their fourth year.

"Those experiences are priceless when it comes to developing our understanding of the built environment and the working world," she said. "Our school does an amazing job at helping us grow as students and designers."

Arendt already studied abroad in a Fay Jones School design studio in Mexico in summer 2018. During this fall semester, she is studying at the University of Arkansas Rome Center. The Donghia scholarship will help fund that additional educational opportunity, especially meaningful as she pursues a minor in history of architecture and design.

"I am looking forward to being able to travel to so many historic buildings and monuments that I might not have been able to afford to get to without this scholarship," she said.

Arendt also plans to invest in some technology upgrades, with new equipment and programs for design.

"As technology is constantly progressing and allowing us to create amazing things, I'm looking forward to trying some new rendering/3D modeling programs that I couldn't afford before," she said.

The Donghia Foundation conducts the Senior Student Scholarship Award Program to benefit deserving students entering the last year in a baccalaureate degree program in interior design at accredited universities, colleges and schools. Scholarships are awarded on the basis of a juried competition of project submissions. Each award is intended to cover the student's senior year tuition, board, maintenance, books and other requisite student materials. Schools must be invited to participate in the competition program. This is the 13th annual year of the Donghia Senior Scholarship program.