Students Serve Up Café Design
Aimee Kippen
Release date: 17/05/2012
A Perthshire student at Dundee College has had her design chosen for a ‘live project’ involving the Walled Garden café run by PKAVS (Perth and Kinross Association of Voluntary Services).
Aimee Kippen is one of a group of 13 interior design students at Dundee College who were charged with coming up with a design, both interior and exterior, for the café situated at Murray Royal Hospital.
The Luncarty resident’s work was among three designs chosen by Robert Workman, of Robert Workman Creative Designers and Shopfitters, of Errol, the firm involved in giving the café a make-over.
The café caters for staff, patients and the public, the idea of a new design is to attract new customers.
Aimee, a former Perth Grammar School pupil, is on the HNC 3D design: interior design programme, along with her classmates and students on the HND programme, spent at least four hours each week for the past eight weeks, creating a design.
The project came about through the Education into Enterprise business-led student work placement programme that supports employers by providing people with specific skills for short term projects.
After initial discussion with Robert Workman, Nicola Tully, Dundee College enterprise work placement co-ordinator, approached the art and design staff to see if they had students who could take part.
“As this type of project helps students to see the skills their working on being applied into a real world situation, we were keen to take part,” said Chris Alexander, senior lecturer.
“The design department is always eager to integrate live projects with course work as it also allows students to further develop their client communication, problem solving and creative skills.”
After the initial discussion the class had with Robert Workman, Aimee and her classmates visited the café to investigate the needs, requirements and limitation of the potential designs.
The 18-year-old asked a range of questions to understand the different demographic of customers, staff requirements, the envisaged style of the café and the food and drinks served.
This helped the students to plan around the essentials so the end concepts are not only unique in design but also practical and functional to both café staff and customers.
While at the café, the students took precise measurements on site so they could ultimately create a 3D digital model in class and from this create functional designs.
“I am delighted and a bit surprised to have my design chosen as one of the three which will be used,” said Aimee.
“We all enjoyed the challenge of working on a live job and working with an established design firm.”