SPDC grad student Hebatalla Nazmy has big plans after selection for ESPP’s Summer Fellowship
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EmailSPDC Environmental design grad student Hebatalla Nazmy has big plans after selection for ESPP's Summer Research Fellowship for Urban Environments. Her project is titled, "Residential Interior Design and its Reflection on Urban Environment."
Environmental design grad student Hebatalla Nazmy, in the MSU School of Planning, Design and Construction, was selected for the Environmental Science & Policy Program (ESPP) Summer Research Fellowship for Urban Environments for her project titled, “Residential Interior Design and its Reflection on Urban Environment.” Nazmy, said the fellowship will focus on gathering data from occupants in nearby LEED certified residential buildings.
On her interest in the fellowship, Nazmy said it all started with one email from the school that stood out, “I made sure to flag it,” she said. “I liked it, because it talked about multi-disciplinary fields referring to urban planning.”
The school’s courses in interior design, construction management, and urban & regional planning alongside her adviser, Suk-Kyung Kim, PhD, guided her to applying for this fellowship.
Before coming to MSU last year, Nazmy worked and studied in Egypt, but only as an interior designer.
“I was manly focused only inside the spaces,” she said. “But, when I came here Dr. Kim suggested that I take the course, Urban Planning 855, Urban Sustainability and Climate Change, so that I have a better idea about the surrounding environment also.”
Nazmy looks back on the courses she has taken, because she says they greatly influence her projects. One being a Landscape Architecture Environmental Seminar (LA 883) that explained the connection between a building and its surrounding ecosystem. Another was a construction management course that covered building science and becoming LEED certified.
“So, I knew about the ecosystem around the building from the environmental design seminar, and now through the construction management course I know about building science,” Nazmy said. “This term, “building science,” guided me because it is how a building is effected by the environment around it.”
Nazmy says she can no longer walk into a residential space without analyzing its building science. She pulled up a photograph that shows a living space, which is kept on her laptop as an example of her recreational analysis. In the image a sofa is placed right in front of the only living room window, leaving much of the window covered.
“There is no other place the sofa can fit so the occupant has no choice but to lose much of their window,” she explains.
Nazmy said that since the window is considered a common feature between the interior designer and the architect’s concentrations, more communication earlier on could have changed the outcome. Ideally, the resident would be able to sit and look out the window, or be able to have more light coming into the space than what is offered in the example space.
She said, “Both of them [the interior designer and the architect] have to work together to select the right size, location and orientation for the windows, so they can have the optimal result for the occupant and the environment.”
Her fellowship project will consist of finding nearby residential buildings that are LEED certified and having residents to fill out a post-occupancy evaluation survey that looks into how the building science of a residential building can impact an occupants’ overall well-being. This data will then be applied towards Nazmy’s graduate studies, which looks into effectiveness of building simulation programs used by the School.
“I wanted to have the information from this fellowship to explore 3-D program functionality for multidisciplinary designers,” she said. “I also want to assess the designer's awareness of the occupant's needs and behavior, so they can be better reflected in the early design decisions.”
Please join us in celebrating Nazmy’s fellowship opportunity!
