Join us for a transformative series of events hosted by the Parsons MFA Interior Design program, centered around radically inclusive interiors and fostering spaces of belonging. Taking place on Thursday, November 20th with eleven (11) immersive events and culminating in an exhibition across various New School locations on Monday, December 8th, this initiative invites participants to rethink traditional interior design paradigms and explore how spaces can be shaped by inclusivity, health, and joy.

MFA Interior Design students are redefining interiors as "action settings," inspired by Sarah Hendren’s What Can a Body Do?. This approach prioritizes spatial justice and access, viewing interiors not by aesthetic but by their capacity to facilitate interactions that embody radical care and equity. Through agency, love, and respect, this studio questions who the built environment serves, challenging existing barriers in design for disabled, neurodivergent, gender-diverse, and marginalized communities.

This exhibition and series of conversations will showcase research and studio work addressing ableism, access, and the social model of disability, embracing a community of diverse perspectives. With voices from over 20 countries, this student cohort values lived experience and fosters innovation, pushing design beyond ADA requirements to celebrate a spectrum of identities, abilities, and embodiments. Join us to reimagine interiors as inclusive spaces for all.

The studio creates a Sensory and Spatial Inclusion Lab at Parsons that addresses the intersection of: Gender, Disability, Neurodiversity, Body Types, Spirituality, Age, Culture, Indigeneity, Shape or fat positivity, Sexuality, Mental Health, and the Built Environment.

(11) Experiences to attend: 

Sobremesa

N building (66 fifth avenue) 4th floor in front of MFA Industrial Design

By Alexa Montemayor Tatum, Ochi Guerrero Arguello, and Marian Almanza Oliveros

How can the simple act of sharing a meal become a bridge back home and for belonging?

What if a table could hold not just food, but memories, warmth, and connection?

Sobremesa is a ritual that connects individuals through the sharing of food and conversation, transmitting the warmth and customs of Latin culture. Using fabric, thrifted plates, and decorative food, it creates a safe and intimate space where community and belonging are fostered. Through this shared act, those far from home can rediscover the comfort and familiarity of their origins.

Marks We Leave

E building (25 East 13th Street) 3rd floor in corridor outside Donghia Gallery

By Cagla Ekinci and Kula Ganesa Subramaniyan

Through cultural and memorial exchange, is it possible to create a community or space that allows for self-expression without judgment?

Designed as an antidote to the restless pace and loneliness of city life, this ritual invites participants to embrace stillness and forge deeper human connections. With this ritual, we invite international students within the Parsons community to take a moment to connect with those around them, not only through conversation but also through self-expression. After a long coffee session, they are encouraged to dump their coffee grounds directly onto the bio-based Mehndi-motif tabletop and use the painting tools to use henna and coffee to be creative and messy. We seek to create collaboration through self-expression.

Resonance

E building (25 East 13th Street) 3rd floor, across from room 301

By Tejaswini Mukundh and Mallika Sharma

How can a single space be interpreted and experienced in various ways to help your state of mind and sense of belonging via one’s interaction with a harmony of acoustics, color, materiality and people?

Resonance is a sensory ritual that offers a space for mental decluttering through playful interaction with colorful threads and musical strings. Participants are invited to tangle, untangle, braid, the threads and pluck the strings, engaging their senses of touch, sight, and hearing to find calm and connection amidst the colors and vibrations. The experience transforms stress into rhythm, allowing a moment of grounding, peace, and quiet companionship.

Mind Stretching

University Building ( 66 5th Ave), 3rd floor public sitting area near elevators

By Carlota Riveroll and Andrea Hubard

How can we, the students of The New School, deconstruct our anxieties and mental pitfalls in order to reframe our expectations and anxieties over the future through the technique of collage?

Through “Mind Stretching” we aim to make students who are pursuing their undergraduate or graduate degrees and consider themselves to be going through a quarter life crisis to reframe their expectations and anxieties over the future through the technique of collage. We want students to leave feeling free, loose, and flexible, the way you would feel after stretching your body, but with your mind. This experience combines metaphysical experience with actual physical action, allowing students to work with their hands to give their minds a mindful break.

Soundarya- A Ritual Around Skincare

JJ Building (39 W 13th Street) 3 Floor Student Union space

By Shreya Gottumukkala and Kavisha Doshi

How can the sensory experience of Indian natural ingredients through skincare reconnect us to our bodies and minds?

“Soundarya” is an immersive sensory experience that reconnects individuals with their body and mind through the practice of skincare. Using natural ingredients as a playful medium for discovery, the space invites participants to craft their own body masks while engaging with others and the materials around them. It becomes a shared ritual of touch, texture, and connection, where care is both personal and collective.

Spice Tent

E Building (25 E 13th Street) Floor 2, E200 MFA Interior Design butcher blocks 

By Leela Amladi and Maia Lafortezza

“How might chai serve as a prototype for creating mobile spaces of curiosity, calm, and connection?”

The Spice Pavilion is a mobile installation designed as a retreat from the high-pressure environment of higher education, offering participants a space to slow down, reconnect with themselves, and engage with others. Through multi-sensory experiences—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste—participants explore and interact freely with hanging spice installations and chai, finding grounding through active meditation. The project centers accessibility, neurodiverse perspectives, and relational participation, inviting community contribution and ownership while creating a space of open exploration and sensory reflection.

Shadow Boxing: A Ritual of Release

E Building (25 E 13th Street) room E205 / Swing Room

By Alex Lowe and Omar Seda

How can striking and smashing objects help release tension and stress?

Shadow Boxing is a participatory ritual for graduate students navigating finals stress. Guided by a projected shadow, participants move through zones of tension, release, and recovery. Inspired by combat sports, this installation transforms physical expression into collective empowerment.

“Shadow Boxing” is a participatory ritual designed to engage the graduate community within the School of Constructed Environments. In this gamified, interactive experience, participants follow a projected shadow as it guides them through a sequence of stretching, movement, and rest.

The installation features:

Spider webbed roped stretching and warm-up room
Sensory punching bag zone
Breaking zone for symbolic release
Cool-down zone for reflection and recovery

This ritual responds to the heightened stress many graduate students experience during finals. By offering a physical outlet for tension, it invites participants to release pent-up energy in a safe, expressive environment.

The concept emerged from Alex and Omar’s shared experience with combat sports—and their mutual recognition of how liberating it can feel to strike pads or a punching bag. “Shadow Boxing” channels that sense of empowerment into a collective, cathartic design intervention.

UNNATURAL NATURE: Dream Space for Reconnecting Mind and Body

E Building (25 E. 13th Street) 3rd floor Lighting lab 

Creators: Isac Blücher, Andrea Miller, Mark Séjourné  

How can we manipulate space to have the same effect on our minds and body as we get from being in nature while using “artificial” elements specific to the human made interior? Especially within the context of an open-floor plan studio with no spaces dedicated to privacy and sensory recovery, how can we provide a built environment that allows for a sense of community / togetherness without requiring explicit socialization through performance/perception?

The ritual begins outside of the lighting lab on the 3rd floor. Participants are told to remove their shoes and prepare their minds for a period of mental freedom/untethering. The space is one to experience alongside others, but it is not intended for conversation. Entering the room, participants will walk down a gauzy corridor constructed of fabric hanging from the ceiling, and emerge into a space where projections and colored lights create an atmosphere of tranquility and peacefulness. A droning synth/sine wave sound is played over speakers and as time goes on, this soundscape builds to include bird songs and soft piano. The lights pulse very slowly to encourage restful breathing and slowed heart rates. Participants are encouraged to move freely throughout the space and interact with the fabric installations as they see fit.

The soundscape will fade out until it's a droning pulsating tone again. Eventually, after 15 minutes have passed, silence will take over the room and the lights will return to a neutral state. Participants will be gently guided out of the room to reacclimatize to their lives with renewed energy.

Circle of Discovery

E Building (25 E. 13th Street), room e205

By Zilong Yu and Sining Chen

How can play turn a classroom interior space into an environment of discovery, connection, and belonging?

This ritual transforms circulation into exploration through a series of playful spatial games where participants search for hidden puzzle pieces throughout the space, guided by visual cues rather than screens. As pieces are found, everyone gathers around a central circular seating structure to assemble the puzzle together, shifting from individual wandering to community interaction. Through shared movement, exploration, and collaboration, the space becomes a site of connection that invites people to talk to each other about their surroundings.

Low sensory space spruce-up

E Building (25 E. 13th Street), 2nd floor low sensory space located in E200, north east far corner. 

Tended to and created by Keith Geldof

Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed by your surroundings? 

In the university environment, in particular, in the open studio environment we are surrounded by “community”. This communal landscape has many pros and many cons. As our educational space is shared, it can lead to sensory overload. The space is alive with people, chatter, activity, moods and energies, good-days, bad-days, stress, echos and sometimes even birds! We are in a community, to some degree, by default. This space allows for a moment of decompression. A private space that provides an opportunity to recenter. However and in whatever way that looks for an individual: prayer, meditation, quiet, rest or escape. 

This space is intended to support the community, by supporting the people in it.

Cosmic Belonging

Mobile structure starting in E Building (25 East 13th Street) 3rd floor Lighting Lab and moving to 13th Street

By Kate Cohen

How does light projecting relate us to the constellations? How do we locate ourselves and each other in an expansive world/life? 

Participants enter a darkened room and receive a flashlight paired with a punched card encoding a specific constellation — their “spirit” star pattern. By shining their flashlights onto the surrounding walls, individual projections overlap, merge, and drift, forming a communal sky made through collective mapping. Participants are also welcome to recline on large nature inspired cushions and similarly feel grounded through playing with scale. Taking on the “small” feeling of a bug, one that is parallel to feeling “small” against the stars. 

Faculty:

Michele Gorman and Kimberly Tate

Teaching Assistants: 

Kevin She