U.S. News & World Report Ranks Interior DESIGN DEPARTMENT #1 IN THE COUNTRY

Pratt Institute’s Department of Interior Design was once again ranked #1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report in its 2013 guide to America's Best Graduate Schools, published in March 2012. Pratt’s industrial design and communications design programs were ranked fifth and twelfth respectively.

Among the Interior Design department’s prominent alumni are Samuel Botero (B.F.A. ’68), principal of Samuel Botero Associates in New York, New York; Joe D’Urso (B.F.A. ’65), president of D’Urso Design, Inc. in Santa Monica, California; and Laura Bohn (B.F.A. ’76), principal of Bohn Design Associates, Inc. in New York, New York. 

The late Naomi Leff (M.S. ’73), who created elegant spaces for celebrities and retailers like Ralph Lauren, Ferragamo, Gucci, and Giorgio Armani, endowed The Naomi Leff Excellence in Interior Design Scholarship, providing one full-tuition scholarship and several partial scholarships annually to outstanding Interior Design graduate students. She also recently left sketches and renderings from the Leff Archive to Pratt Institute. Leff, who was known for her contemporary reworking of traditional designs, was repeatedly listed among the top names in her field by leading magazines such as Interior Design. She was inducted into the Design Hall of Fame in 1991 and named the Dean of Design by Architectural Digest in 2005.  The late Harold E. Leeds, architect and designer, helped to establish Pratt's graduate school of interior design in 1968 and became its first chair. 

The U.S. News & World Report rankings were based solely on a survey of art school deans and other top art academicians, two per school, at 230 MFA programs in art and design nationwide. 

Text: Amy Aronoff

Comments

[Squire]

I enjoyed the intensive two years I spent at Pratt. No better description than a springboard for path to inventive thinking for the rest of my life. How I wished I had stayed and graduated with my talented classmates. I left for California for the Art School in Pasadena and ended up trained as a US Army officer in 1964. Bad decision. I was an inspiration for my younger brother who is now retiring this year as a senior vice president in a major ad agency.