Introducing - The PlaidFox Student Design Challenge with Western Living

With more interior design students graduating every day, it can be difficult to stand out and get noticed. It's that age-old problem: you need work experience to get a job, but you need a job to get work experience. On the West Coast we have a rich and active design industry, but looking around, we noticed there weren't many (or any) interior design challenges that were just for local Vancouver students. With this new scholarship, we really hope we can help talented and driven aspiring designers get noticed, get work experience and ultimately attain a career in interior design.

In Partnership With
challenge Old World
challenge BM
challenge Mirage
challenge Robert Allen
challenge WL

The Prize

Architectural

$2,500 Scholarship

To put towards your university or school fees, this can be given directly to the school or to your bank.
Architectural

$2,500 PERSONAL BRANDING PACKAGE

49 Branding will work with you to perfect your resume, peronal website, Linkedin and all things personal branding and marketing.
Interior Design

FEATURE IN WESTERN LIVING AND MORE

A news feature on you and your design will appear on Western Living online and several other publications.
Interior Design

INTERNSHIP AT PLAIDFOX

Work at PlaidFox and you decide how long you want this internship to be. Get real-life design experience at our busy Gastown Design office.

Judges

Judge 1 Ben Leavitt

PlaidFox Creative Director

Judge 2 ANICKA QUIN

Western Living
Editor + Chief

Judge 3 MATTHEW McCORMICK

Lighting Designer

Judge 4 EMA PETER

Architectural Photographer

Judge 5 AZIM VIRANI

The Buchan
Real Estate Investor

The Challenge

PlaidFox Studio is completely gutting a sleepy hotel in Vancouver's West End and redesigning it into a wild and spectacular boutique concept featuring an experimental mishmash of old schoolhouse, Scandinavian modernism and art deco. Designing for the lively, successful, globally minded future guest, we're going to revive and celebrate the building's history with a new (vintage-inspired) look, inside and out—and we want one student to be a part of it.

Challenge Exterior rendering of the 63-room hotel in the West End, Vancouver.

The challenge is currently closed. Check back soon for our next challenge.

Challenge Left
Challenge Right
'ATTIC ROOMS' IN THE BASEMENT OF THE HOTEL

We are looking for students to tackle the dark and narrow under-utilized hallway that leads to these basement penthouse-style rooms and turn it into the most instagrammable space in the hotel. This is not like other challenges where students are tasked with designing a 5,000-square-foot medical facility; this is a quirky, awkward, manageable space filled with potential—it's the perfect opportunity for students to leave their mark.

Challenge Bottom Left
THE HALL IN THE BASEMENT TO THE ATTIC ROOMS

The information packed includes all the info you need to desgin this space. This design will then be refined in collaboration with PlaidFox and we will incorporate it into the hotel. It's Free to Enter: PlaidFox will cover all material costs for the finalists' presentations, so the only cost to students is their time.

Challenge Bottom
WE'RE GETTING WILD WITH EVERY SQUARE INCH

And you should, too. This is your opportunity to wow us with your boundary-pushing, out-of-the-box design.