Interior Design at Parul University: Nandini Agrawal’s Pine Studio Story

Most students who eventually become designers can pinpoint the moment they knew. For Nandini Agrawal, the moment came at age eleven. She is from Narmadapuram, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, came to Parul University for a four-year design program from Parul Institute of Design. She took an internship of three months at Pine Studio in Ahmedabad. She found the internship through LinkedIn with assistance and support from the teachers and mentors of Parul University.

The broader strategy guide for design students seeking internships appears in the companion article. For another recent PID graduate’s interior design internship story. Read her full story in this article.

Nandini Agrawal is from a small town in Madhya Pradesh where she completed her primary and higher secondary schooling. Her interest in design was unusually early. She had decided she wanted to be a designer by the age of eleven, well before she had any structured understanding of what the discipline involved. The certainty about direction was unusual; the four-year design programme she eventually joined at the Parul Institute of Design became the structured pathway for capability that her early interest had only nominated.

Her own framing of her undergraduate experience is honest. She describes herself as an average student during college, working two to three hours daily on assignments rather than studying intensively every day. Looking back, she misses her time at Parul University, but she does not romanticise it as more disciplined than it was.

The four-year programme at the Parul Institute of Design provided Nandini with both the theoretical understanding of architecture and interiors and the technical skills the discipline requires. When she began the programme she knew very little about interior design as a working discipline. By the time she completed it, she had developed working capability in space planning, conceptual design thinking, and the software tools that anchor professional practice.

• Space planning and conceptual thinking. The programme emphasised the design of usable spaces, requiring students to think systematically about how spaces would be inhabited, how function would translate into form, and how aesthetic decisions would emerge from problem-solving logic rather than precede it.
• AutoCAD and SketchUp proficiency. The curriculum developed her working capability in AutoCAD for 2D drafting and SketchUp for 3D modelling, the two software tools that remain dominant in Indian interior design practice. She arrived at her internship with operational software fluency rather than introductory familiarity.
• Technical detailing fundamentals. The technical knowledge and gaining understanding of the fundamentals beyond software skills, the curriculum happens to prepare students with the basics and actual principles of designing. It covers information and principles on usable space, including rooms, circulation, aesthetic touch, etc., that integrate into practical requirements.
• The thesis project methodology. The final year programme requires students to undertake a substantive thesis project that demonstrates integration of accumulated learning. For Nandini, this project became the structured opportunity to apply academic learning to a complete design problem.

Nandini’s year project required her to take an existing space and reconceptualise its function. She chose an office building and transformed it into a Meditation Centre. The choice was deliberate. The transformation required her to think about how the same physical space could host fundamentally different human activity, how circulation, lighting, materiality, acoustic considerations, and visual atmosphere would need to change to support meditation practice rather than commercial work.

The project taught her how to apply academic learning to a complete design problem rather than to isolated assignments. The integration of conceptual development, space planning, technical detailing, and material thinking inside a single project structure mirrored the kind of work she would later encounter at Pine Studio.

Faculty mentorship at the Parul Institute of Design operates through structured iterative feedback rather than purely didactic instruction. For Nandini, Ms. Rutu Bhatt served as the most significant faculty mentor across her programme. By Nandini’s own framing, Ms. Bhatt was among the most kind and helpful faculty members at the institute, providing guidance whenever Nandini was confused or stuck on a problem and offering motivation through periods of low energy or fatigue.

The mentorship relationship was not transactional. Ms. Bhatt provided both technical guidance on design problems and personal encouragement during the inevitable periods of self-doubt that design education produces in most students. The pattern of consistent faculty availability is structurally important to how PID supports student development.

When Nandini realised her semester required an internship, she experienced the kind of professional anxiety that most design students encounter at this point. Working in a real office, away from the academic supports that had structured her undergraduate years, looked intimidating from the outside. She did not let the apprehension stop her. The specific tactical playbook for navigating the design internship search appears in the companion article. Her own approach can be summarised in a few specific decisions.

• LinkedIn as primary search channel. Nandini used LinkedIn to identify and apply to design firms. The platform offered visibility into firms across multiple cities, the people working at them, and the work the firms had produced recently, allowing more informed targeting than blind applications would have.
• Application volume with selective acceptance. She applied to a large number of companies, generating multiple potential offers rather than gambling on a single application. The breadth of applications meant she could afford to evaluate offers on merit rather than accepting whatever came first.
• Rejecting the wrong offer. She received an offer from a Vadodara-based startup but chose not to accept it. Her reasoning was specific: startups carry operational unpredictability that established firms do not, and the learning environment at a recognised firm would be more structured.
• Selecting on brand reputation. She chose Pine Studio for its established market presence in Ahmedabad. The reputation signal mattered to her because well-known firms typically have more developed internship structures, clearer mentorship pipelines, and stronger downstream career signalling for graduates entering the industry.
• Portfolio and resume preparation. She assembled her professional portfolio and resume using online resources alongside teacher guidance. The materials she produced were the operational artefacts that the firm evaluated.
• The interview itself. The selection process consisted of a relatively straightforward interview covering basic questions about interior design. After the interview, the firm confirmed her selection.

Nandini’s internship at Pine Studio in Ahmedabad provided what she has described as a great learning experience, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and practical industry exposure. Her three months at the firm were structured around working alongside senior designers who assigned her specific tasks across active projects.

• Her core responsibilities. Creating project visualisations and producing detailed 2D drawings of design work. These tasks sat at the intersection of conceptual design and technical execution, requiring both creative judgement and drafting precision.
• Software capability expansion. While Parul University had given her the foundations in AutoCAD and SketchUp, the Pine Studio internship is where her software work became operationally fluent. She has been explicit that academic exposure to software is necessarily limited; the internship is where actual professional capability is built through daily use on real projects.
• Graphic design improvement. She had identified graphic design as a relative weakness coming into the internship. The senior designers at Pine Studio supported her improvement, providing targeted guidance that allowed her to develop capability she had not built during her academic years.
• Client interaction and communication. She spoke directly with the firm’s clients during her internship, which developed her communication skills and helped her understand how design decisions translate to client expectations. The capability of listening carefully to clients emerged as one of the most important skills she developed.
• Professional discipline. Beyond technical work, the internship taught her how to work with people, manage tasks across deadlines, and operate within professional time structures. She has been candid that time management was a skill she wished she had developed during her academic years; the internship surfaced this as an operational priority.

Looking back across her undergraduate years and her Pine Studio internship, Nandini’s advice for design students currently navigating the same transition is specific and operational.

• Build technical software capability before applying. She has been explicit that AutoCAD and SketchUp proficiency is what makes the early days of an internship workable. Students who arrive at internships without working capability in these tools spend their first weeks catching up rather than contributing.
• Listening as professional skill. Internships require taking direction from senior designers, listening carefully to client preferences, and absorbing feedback without defensiveness. The capability to listen well is what distinguishes interns who are entrusted with substantive work from interns who are not.
• Time management as foundational discipline. The single skill Nandini wishes she had developed earlier in her academic years was time management. The internship environment surfaces time management as immediately operational; students who arrive with the capability already developed are positioned differently.
• Interior design as people-work, not only design-work. Her summary framing is that interior design is not only about designing spaces. It is also about working with people: clients, contractors, senior designers, peer interns. Students who treat the discipline as purely creative miss this dimension and tend to struggle when professional work surfaces it.

Nandini Agrawal, after completing her interior design degree from the Parul Institute of Design, now plans to focus on adding more to her practical experience through full-time roles. She is actively preparing and applying for the roles through guidance and mentorship support from Parul University. She doesn’t plan to pursue a master’s at the moment; her recent experience as an intern makes her capable of going further with full-time roles.

Also Read: How Does University Support Design Students to Get Their Internships?