BY LEE CHONGHUI

Well done: Tew (centre) presenting a prize to interior design student Dan Piai Yew (left) as Chong looks on.

KUALA LUMPUR: The annual Interior Design Students’ Saturday, the country’s largest annual competition for interior design students, will help to elevate the country’s interior design standards by encouraging competition among them.

The host of the competition, Erican College founder and managing director Datuk Eric Chong, said the competition engages students and boosts their creativity.

“Students usually operate and learn in the confines of their own environment (institutions) and here is where they can see what their peers from different institutions are doing, and try to match them,” he said after the prize-giving ceremony.

Now into its 20th year, the competition is organised by the Malaysian Institute of Interior Designers (MIID), with Dulux, a brand of Akzo Nobel Paints Malaysia, as its corporate partner.

The competition themed IDMOJI was held at Perpustakaan Kuala Lumpur and Menara DBKL on Saturday.

Despite it being a competition, Chong said the participants had good spirits and remained courteous towards their fellow competitors.

“There was a team which did not bring enough tools, yet other teams offered their tools to them. This is the sort of healthy competition we emphasise,” he said.

MIID vice-president Ooi Boon Seong said the competition exposed students to what an interior designer does.

“Many people think that interior design is just decorating a space but it is actually a highly-specialised profession that involves architecture, structural changes and other factors to create space using good designs,” he said.

Through the competition, participants learned to work with people to create quality projects in a short duration of time, he added.

MIID council member Sharifah Suzana Syed Hassan, who chaired this year’s Students’ Saturday, said no one could choose the colleagues they would like to have in the real working environment.

Mah Sing senior general manager of corporate communications Lyanna Tew said sponsoring the event was a great opportunity to engage with future interior designers of the nation and thanked the organisers for it.

“This is a great chance for us to engage students through such a large scale educational project as we (Mah Sing) value and believe in life-long learning,” she said, adding that the company also supports initiatives by Teach for Malaysia, Dignity for Children Foundation.

Akzo Nobel manager in charge of interior design Khiew Wei Yi said the competition was the “best event in town” for interior design students to showcase their talents.

Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) project implementation and building management deputy director Sharifah Junidah Syed Omar said the competition has been made part of DBKL’s Kuala Lumpur Design Month (October) 2016 and was a good platform for the students to broaden their minds.

A total of 53 cash prizes worth RM15,000 were given out to the winners.

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