News

Two Baker College of Clinton Township interior design students have each won a $50 design charette scholarship from the National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA) and General Electric (GE). The scholarship winners are:

• Crystal DuRocher, of Warren, a junior at Baker College of Clinton Township
• Sara Lawler, of Hazel Park, also a junior at Baker’s Clinton Township campus

The challenge was to design a kitchen utilizing the provided GE appliance specifications and staying within the provided space specifications. The students had three hours to complete the design.

The top contestants from each NKBA-accredited program, in addition to the $50 scholarship, received a Certificate of Achievement, and their entries are entered in the National GE Charette Contest. In addition, the winners are honored in Profiles, the quarterly magazine of the National Kitchen & Bath Association.

The term “charette” evolved from a pre-1900 exercise at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in France. Architectural students were given a design problem to solve within an allotted time. When the time was up, the students would rush their drawings from the studio to the Ecole in a cart called a charette. The term evolved to refer to the intense design exercise itself. Today it refers to a creative process akin to visual brainstorming that is used by design professionals to develop solutions to a design problem within a limited timeframe.