I’m back with the review of the 3rd and 4th episodes of Interiors by Design. If you haven’t read the first installment of this series, you should. This bog post has been sitting in my drafts for nearly 2 weeks. Between work and issues with uploading posts, I’ve been struggling. Maybe it’s high time a professional ran some diagnostics on this site.
I think the big question for this post is, Did it get better?
Yes and no.
Let’s get in to it.
EPISODE 3- STYLING
This episode is about styling or accessorizing as Titi Fowora calls it. It seemed as though this class first, competition second sequence is the decided format for the show. The episode opens with the contestants being taken to Urban Living a furniture and home goods store owned by Karen Koshoni an interior designer. Karen shows them around the store and gives them some tips and tricks for styling rooms. She educates them on the importance of balance, symmetry and cohesion. I should mention that Urban iving is one of the better decor/design stores in Lagos.
After this, they head to Angelika’s another home goods store for a little practice. There’s a merchandise set up consisting of a brown tufted couch, a decorative wall shelf, a coffee table and two traditional chairs. Very chaotic. They are required to go around this store to bring items they think would fit best into the living area scene. I thought this was a good exercise. It was a good way to see the reasoning behind the objects people were picking. There contestants made the best of the task and some people picked really interesting accessories.
For the major task, the contestants were taken to Andrazini a design business located in Yaba. The founder, Andrew Adeniyi explains the process of making an pouffe. Their task was to shop for materials from the Tejuosho market to complete the frame of an ottoman.
It was absurd. The first reason being that covering an ottoman with fabric didn’t have much to do with interior design. Having a flair for product design is not something all interior designers have. And forcing what’s not there is a reason for a lot of intellectual property theft going on in the industry. But that’s a story for another day.
The contestants worked on the pouffe while being interviewed; read pestered by the host; Akinola Fafowora. He is asking about the market experience after asking in one one on one interviews and one of the contestants.Seun is obviously irritated. Akinola describes what they are doing as arts and crafts which makes me chuckle because there are parallels. The contestants make faces as he badgers them with questions that they have no time to answer. He insists on teasing one of the contestants about an earlier scuffle which was not shown. By not providing context the badgering feels like an empty ploy to create drama. A better way to have the contestant’s thoughts be shown would be single or group interviews usually done in reality TV shows
Judging begins and the top two contestants are; Ummi and Zainab. They were on the top because their pouffes was neat. That was true. But is elegant not a reach to describe ankara pouffes with littered small bows and stones?. . The bottom three made it there because they had ornamentation on their pouffes making it to sit on and their pouffes were not well done.
The contestants did comment that they were not given enough tools to work with. It seems like this is a running theme and Titi tried to pass it off as in real life there are not enough resources and I disagree. It was such a basic task and adequate supplies could have had them perform better.
Shem was evicted because his pouffe was lacking in both function and design direction.
I think the point of the task was to emphasize functionality and cleanliness in design. At least those were the only lessons to me. I think this could’ve been tested in a better way than having designers do DIYs.
EPISODE 4 :CONSTRUCTION AND ARCHITECTURE
The contestants were taken to a construction site. The project manager took them around the high rise comprising of three-bedroom flats. They were taught about piping, screeding and several processes that occur before a space becomes habitable.
To make sure the contestants saw the transformation that occurred and the importance of these foundational processes they are taken to a finished flat which they, ooh and aahed over. I’ll let you be the judge of whether it was impressive.
The episode was guest judged by Olatunji Olagunju who is an architect. The episode’s challenge was an exam on the building terms and information they learned earlier.
After the test, the host comes in to ask the contestants questions. At this point, it’s obvious the cast doesn’t quite take to him. He asks the same questions and his timing is not great.
Unfortunately, Zainab who was top of the last episode scored lowest and had to leave the competition. She was quite emotional stating that she had done well in previous challenges because she learned all of that from watching television. However, she had little experience with architecture.
Episodes 3 and 4 helped me make peace with the fact that this was not going to be the design competition I was used to. I was invested either ways. I wanted to know who won. It felt like it would be Ife, she was one of the contestants with design experience and she had her head in the game.
If you’d like to watch the show, click here.
What do you think? Have you started watching Interiors by Design? Is a quiz good enough for a design competition? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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