Emily Smith, CID
Emily Smith is a certified interior designer and an assistant professor of Interior Design with Virginia Commonwealth University.
Her professional design experiences range from residences to airports through her time with firms in Virginia and Washington. Her teaching focuses on the design studio, materials studies, and collaborative study abroad work involving interior design and craft and materials studies students and faculty. Her fascination with the often untold stories discovered through pattern study, as well as the opportunities pattern study provides in evolving and invigorating conventional design studio coursework drives her interest in pattern research.
Dr. Sara Reed and Emily Smith, assistant professors with VCU Interior Design, received a 2018 VCUarts Exploratory Research Grant that is funding their current work, Patterns of Place. In examining man-made and naturally created patterns and motifs in Virginia, their research explores the ways in which these often-understudied forms convey meaning and ideology. By studying these regional, vernacular patterns, they are working to develop a catalog of existing regional patterns as well as a methodology of study that can be used to examine patterns around the globe.