Why study with us?
- Dual emphasis on creative and critical enquiry in the broad context of design, visual arts, fashion and textiles, design thinking, and the humanities.
- The opportunity to participate in multidisciplinary social design projects.
- Interdisciplinary workshops that encourage you to think across a range of design fields including art, fashion, architecture, and urban design.
- A creative approach that will support you in developing your own practice in the field.
A selection of work by Interior Design MA students for their Design Museum project
Course structure
During semester 1, the Situate module provides an opportunity for you to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and identify ambitions for future study. This module is a great opportunity for you to think about the direction you are taking, whether you are returning to education or are continuing your studies. Lecture courses in Design Strategies and Research Practices run in parallel.
In semester 2, you consolidate and extend the themes, questions and approaches established in the preliminary projects through the Design Lab module. Alongside this you can choose from option modules in Sustainable Design Futures(s) or Critical Readings. A proposal for the final project will also be developed and submitted. You’ll work on the Masterwork project for the whole of semester 3.
Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.
Syllabus
The programme begins by giving you the opportunity to position what you do within the wider discourse and practice of design. Working from the outside in, you will be supported in situating what you want to do in terms of contemporary issues and global challenges. At the same time you will investigate the interior from the inside out, as you begin to methodologically engage with space on a sensory and affective level, to interrogate the physiological, psychological and emotional experience of being in a place.
You’ll examine how colour, form, finish and furnishings affect us, and how to use such elements to create new ways of living and being that respond to the large-scale challenges of contemporary life. Through a series of interlinked modules you’ll develop a set of concerns, issues, themes, questions and techniques that make up your practice, which you will fully explore in the final Masterwork module.
Core modules
Situate
This module introduces established and emerging principles, theories, and thematics in design. The module will help you situate yourself, your interests and practices within contemporary design discourses and global contexts and help identify and nurture personal motivations within your area of specialisation.
Themes covered may include sustainability discourses, power and politics, decolonising design, equity and equality, systemic complexity, and creating change through design.
Design Strategies
Through small scale experimental interior design projects this module provides an opportunity to take stock of your position, to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and identify ambitions for future study.
This unit is diagnostic in emphasis and challenges you to gauge the extent of your knowledge, skills and abilities and identify study priorities for the academic year. Projects will place a high priority on decision-making and enquiry, and will promote and support self-directed study through a developing critical dialogue.
Research Practices
Throughout this module, you develop your research skills to construct research questions, hypotheses and methodologies, which you will adapt to issues of personal interest. You also develop and submit a research project proposal.
Design Lab
In this module, you will develop your approaches to design within your specialisation through experimental practices. The module provides space to explore and develop your ideas through independently defined methods to enable you to progress to a position of authority in your chosen area of specialisation.
This approach will support you in confidently and critically developing individually defined and research-informed design practices. The module provides a reflective and productive environment for you to develop self-directed projects that critically engage with current design discourses.
Masterwork
This module takes the form of a self-directed design research project. The Masterwork project requires you to develop and present the culmination, integration and application of experiences, methods, skills and mastery accrued throughout your studies so far. A key feature of this module is identifying and preparing for professional life after graduation.
Options*
- Design Futures looks at the way in which design is responding to the changing world.
- Critical Readings explores the theoretical underpinnings of interior design, sustainable practice and urban planning.
*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.