Pensole Lewis students pitch ideas to design student center
(CBS DETROIT) - Michigan's first and only HBCU is making strides to bring more opportunities for design students, and they're starting with their own campus.
Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design is giving students a chance to renovate spaces on school grounds to help creatives draw inspiration.
Design students got a chance to pitch their ideas to reimagine the student center while putting their creative and analytical skills.
Rodney Banks and Angel Buckens' vision of what a space for students looks like blew judges away.
Known as team "Birds of a Feather," the pair was one of three groups presenting designs to makeover the student center.
Pepsico and Millerknoll collaborated on the effort to help increase diversity in the design industry.
Their model will now become the blueprint for the school's Pepsi Stronger Together Relax and Refresh Lounge.
"It definitely was like the hard work and dedication of late night hours, understanding our whole process and how we wanted to implement that and making sure we stayed within that budget that was received and making sure we implemented everything in a nice strategic way," Buckens said.
Syndicated radio personality Angela Yee moderated the event where each group was given the task of outlining a design within a $50,000 budget.
"The fact that they're going to have on their resume that they designed a Pepsi space, that life experience when you get out of school, to say look, this is what I did with Pepsi, I think that's something that could be life-changing."
Pensole Lewis founder Dwayne Edwards says black people account for less than three percent of the design industry and he's working to create more opportunities for inclusion.
"From a car to a house to sneakers, to packaging, furniture, we're almost non-existent and you know we have one of the largest spending powers in America," Edwards said.
"So, we're consumers of a lot of products and services, but very few of us are doing the work behind the scenes to really bring it authentic and culturally to the consumers that actually want the product."
