Interior Architecture and Design BA (Hons)

Course overview

The course encourages conceptual thinking but always marries designs to reality. This would help students find employment across the many sectors of interior architecture, whether in retail, hospitality and leisure, workplace design, civic and culture or exhibition design.

• Creativity: You will be challenged to develop innovative and experimental solutions, transforming spaces through material understanding and user insights.
• Making: An emphasis on making, both physical and virtual, underpins the course and ensures that graduates are both digitally fluent and materially sensitive.
• Employability: You will be supported to develop the skills, knowledge and resilience required to enter industry. You will build a sophisticated design portfolio over the course of your studies, with the aim of giving you access to opportunities for employment or further study.

Why you should study this course

• Studio Culture: Our studio-based course will allow you to explore, create, collaborate and develop the skills required to design innovative spaces, supported by peers and guided by experienced practitioners. (staff subject to change).
• Analogue and Digital: We deliberately strike a balance between traditional hand-processes and emerging technologies. You will participate in workshops for drawing, and model making, along with CAD, 3D computer modelling and animation. Traditional workshops sit alongside facilities for laser cutting, CNC milling and 3D printing⁴.
• International Network: Our students may go on to find employment in a variety of fields and professions including interior architecture, lighting design, exhibition design, concept design, theatre and stage design and project management. Gain an international perspective with our international collaborative institutions, who provide opportunities for shared learning and the potential for travel and study abroad². Our visiting speaker programme makes use of our extensive alumni and industry network².
• Sustainability: In a finite world you will be in a great position to help lead the world with sustainable solutions to architectural problems. Adaptive reuse of buildings as opposed to demolition and rebuild, will become a must and interior architects and designers will be highly sought after.
• Professional Accreditation and Awards: The course has been accredited by The Society of British & International Interior Designers (SBID) as a Centre of Excellence¹. Our students have won awards at national exhibitions and events including Free Range and New Designers.

Careers and opportunities

On successful completion of the course, you will be able to:

• apply creative and logical thinking processes to the business of solving spatial and interior design problems and develop ideas through to material outcomes and construction
• analyse the interrelationships within and between aspects of interior design; to describe, interpret and evaluate designed spaces from a range of critical perspectives, considering the context of their construction, clients, users, brand issues, markets and history of design processes
• engage in integrated design practice based on the acquisition, understanding and application of the skills and working methods typical of interior architects and designers
• realise a range of practical, creative and theoretical projects, analyse design problems and provide appropriate design solutions; initiate projects, meet deadlines, liaise with commercial collaborators, make presentations, research and synthesise information, produce reports and evaluate the design and research work of self and others
• demonstrate skills associated with professional practice; time management, project management, professional level communication, self-promotion, interview technique, information gathering and use of information and communication technology as appropriate
• employ materials, media, techniques, methods, technologies and tools associated with interior architecture and design through drawing, modelling, computer visualisation and animation methods using skill and imagination
• utilise the various means by which one can represent interior design and judge their fitness for purpose; select and use various 2D, 3D, and digital techniques appropriately to communicate design intent and detail.

Alumni are now working all over the globe from LA to Cairo, Dubai, Berlin, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Some have gone on to work for multinational companies such as Gensler or GES. Others have branched out on their own as consultants and freelancers.

The variety and the many sectors of interior architecture and design as a profession, mean you could work in leisure and hospitality, museum design, education design, retail design or even as a concept designer.