At satellites around the world, Indiana University students, faculty and alumni convene and collaborate with their international partners. The latest addition to this system, the IU Ghana Gateway, has presented a collaborative opportunity in the very design of its unfurnished suite, established in May 2024 inside the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences building in the West African nation’s capital of Accra.
IU’s Global Gateway Network of six offices around the world builds relationships with universities, nongovernmental organizations, governments and businesses, creating opportunities for research, conferences, study abroad and internships.
On a practical level, the offices serve as home base, office and classroom for IU stakeholders overseas, as well as a place to meet with their international counterparts. Like embassies, IU Global Gateway offices in Berlin, Mexico City, Bangkok, New Delhi, Beijing and Accra represent IU in their host country and welcome the country in.
To set the stage for this ambitious mission, Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design students in senior lecturer Miyoung Hong’s Interior Design Vertical Studio were asked to propose and present an interior design scheme for the Ghana Gateway office. Their first project of the semester would immerse students in the team-based ethos that is a signature of the field and require a dramatic mental shift.
“I really had to put aside my beliefs about what a typical workspace looks like,” student Emma Adams said.
Taking her interior design students out of their cultural niche was precisely Hong’s goal. In fact, her commitment to multicultural understanding has been recognized with IU’s Inclusive Excellence Award.
“Emerging interior design professionals should have a global view and consider social, cultural, economic and ecological contexts in all aspects of their work,” Hong said.
While she regularly pairs her students with Indiana-based clients to develop design solutions, the opportunity to connect them with a client farther afield emerged through IU’s Client-based International Projects Program. This Internationalization-at-Home initiative administered by the Center for the Study of Global Change helps instructors add a global component to their client-based project with the support of resources and expertise from IU Global.
The extent to which a space meets a user’s needs is a sort of North Star in interior design, so designing a successful interior space starts and ends with the user. The Eskenazi School’s interior design curriculum teaches students to cultivate sensitivity to and empathy for the user — in this case, a user on a continent most had not visited. To foster that understanding, Hong invited Nana Amoah-Ramey, assistant professor in the IU College of Arts and Science’s Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and the African Studies Program, to introduce some fundamentals of Ghanaian culture to her class.
Amoah-Ramey’s lecture delved into events of the life cycle — birth, puberty, marriage and death — in Ghanaian culture and the historical background of the Kente and Adinkra cloth and symbols. She also discussed the significance of colors to the Ghanaian people, including their national flag.
“Our team really took Dr. Nana’s lecture into consideration when developing our project,” Adams said. “We considered how in Ghanaian culture, people communicate with each other and enjoy collaborative environments. We made sure to not wall any part of our design off and provided flexible seating options.”
In addition to a color scheme reminiscent of the Ghanaian flag, collaborative seating arrangements, and a biophilic sensibility prioritizing natural light and air flow, the students incorporated several of the Ghanaian symbols they’d been introduced to: the Ananse spider, connoting wisdom and creativity, for example, as well as the Akwaaba symbol for celebrating Ghanaian hospitality.
“It was challenging to try to incorporate Ghanaian culture in a meaningful way that didn’t come across as disrespectful and insincere,” student Reagan Hill said. “We wanted to incorporate a pattern reminiscent of the Kente cloth, but we struggled to figure out how to incorporate it in a meaningful way. We learned from Dr. Nana that using the Kente cloth as a floor dressing would be frowned upon; we weren’t sure if it would be disrespectful to use it as upholstery on furniture that people would be sitting on.”
A presentation by Cathie Carrigan, director of the IU Global Gateway Network, refined the students’ understanding of the IU Ghana Gateway’s mission and the way the space would be used. Carrigan and Amoah-Ramey were among those invited to the students’ poster presentations of their completed designs; other stakeholders included faculty from the Eskenazi School and the African Studies Program, staff from the Office of the Vice President for International Affairs, and a professional interior designer.
The visitors’ feedback furthered the students’ iterative design process.
“A huge turning point came during the comments section of our presentations,” student Lindsey Reda said. “Many of our guests were concerned where we were sourcing our materials from, so we found materials to source from local businesses in Ghana. Locally sourced materials have a smaller carbon footprint, support the local economy and are higher quality.”
The design proposals will be further evaluated in coming weeks to determine how they might be implemented in the Accra office.
“We are fortunate to have support of scores of faculty, students and staff across Indiana University who are from Ghana, have studied in Ghana or have active research agendas in West Africa,” Carrigan said. “Their feedback will help determine the components that will be the best fit for the space and will help us connect with the artisans in Ghana who can source, or make, some of the materials locally.”
Whether or not their schemes are realized, students acknowledged the transformative potential of designing for an international client.
“I am guilty of often thinking that everyone has the same experiences as me, and not thinking of how other cultures affect design,” Ella Rapp said. “Seeing how they incorporate their values and traditions in their design made me realize how important it is to take these things into consideration into all of my work going forward.”