Listen to this articleWhen Pamela Mazzola was a child, she loved to change the design and rearrange the furniture of her bedroom.
“When I left the bedroom and started venturing out into the rest of the house, my parents began suggesting I look into going to school for interior design,” Mazzola said.
Mazzola obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design from the Fashion Institute of Technology and has since built a successful career in interior design. Her latest move is joining Spector Group, with offices in Woodbury, as a senior interior designer.
With the move, Mazzola returns to the architectural/design firm side after spending six years as the in-house interior designer for Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola.
Prior to that position, she designed for Perkins Eastman in Manhattan and Baldassano Architecture (now known as BLD Architecture) in Patchogue.
“After having the opportunity to do some amazing work in healthcare, I felt it was the right time in my career to go back and get involved in a different sector of design,” Mazzola said. “I had done some corporate work in the past but wanted to do more. I was intrigued by the work Spector Group produced and wanted to be a part of it. Sometimes it’s healthy to shake things up a bit in life.”
Compared to working for an architectural/design firm, one of the biggest differences of working in-house is “the level of intimacy shared between the designer and the client,” she said. “Your client is the person you pass in the hall every day while walking to your desk or see when getting lunch in the cafeteria. You are there for the client to contact with any questions, concerns, follow-up work, changes, etc. That was very different from my past experiences working in design firms.”
Naturally, another important difference is the range of projects available to the designer.
“There are limits to the type of design work available in a facility department,” she said. “In an architectural/design firm the field is far broader and you are able to work on many different types of projects.”
Of her past work, Mazzola is particularly proud of her work on Archstone Communities, Empire National Bank’s headquarters and branches and Winthrop’s Adult Oncology and Hematology Infusion Center and Cyberknife of Manhattan.