“Capacity for Repair”
Andrea Sosa Fontaine - Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Kent State University
Sam Bennett - Visiting Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Pratt Institute
Andrea Sosa Fontaine is a graduate from both the Bachelor of Environmental Design and Master of Interior Design programs at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada. She has taught at the University of Manitoba, as well as the RCCIIT Academy of Design in Toronto, where she was involved in the development of a CIDA accredited Bachelor of Interior Design program.
Her professional experience includes work as a Senior Interior Designer at HOK in the New York and Toronto offices. Her awards include a Storefront Manitoba Commerce Design Award for the Patent 5 Distillery and Tasting Room and an ARIDO Design Award of Merit with the HOK Toronto office. Professor Sosa Fontaine is a maker, trained in both contemporary & traditional shoemaking, and she also runs Annex Design, a bespoke design studio.
Her current research explores the relationships between representation in fashion and interior design, as well as an unpacking and examination of interior design process. Andrea’s research has led her to active inquiry concerned with neurodiversity, repair, and access to spaces of inhabitation. Currently, Andrea is an Assistant Professor of Interior Design here at the CAED.
Sam Bennett is a New York-based ethnographer, maker, and designer with expertise in the fields of space and objects. She believes in slow research that minimally impacts our planet and advocates for human well-being.
Currently, her own research focuses on consumerism, accumulation, and repair of objects. You can find her investigating people’s relationships to objects in the domestic space, making with mycelium and discarded materials, repairing meaningful artifacts, and running Clever/Slice, a global space to share in-progress creative work. Past collaborators include Healthy Materials Lab, Hyloh, Perkins+Will, SITU, and Martha Stewart Living. She received an MFA in Interior Design from Parsons School of Design, and BFAs in Textile Design and Art History from the University of Kansas. Sam also teaches at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and New Jersey Institute of Technology in the Interior Design and Industrial Design departments. In her free time, she darns and writes letters on one of her five typewriters.
