Program Overview

This research-led Interior Design MA addresses the needs of graduates from interior design and related discipline backgrounds, or those who wish to collaborate with professionals in the field. Our Interior Design MA is one of several postgraduate design courses that co-exist at our School of Art, Architecture and Design, offering rich opportunities for the collaborative multidisciplinary approach that is a feature of the current and future design sector and a requirement for success in the field.

The overall theme and content of the course is intended to encourage independent design thinking in the field of the interior. In this respect, the curriculum focuses in an advanced and systematic way on aspects of the profession and practice. Design and research for design occupies a large proportion of the course and the process of design is rehearsed through the vehicle of project work. There is an emphasis upon putting you in a real, complex and ambiguous context for project work, with many more parameters that cover social, political and economic contexts as well as the physical context.

Modules and projects are delivered within a design studio unit that sets a theme for your design work over the academic year, which creates a collaborative working model. The studio runs projects in a range of research interests, sites, building types, cultural and theoretical contexts. The School's Interiors cluster shares a commitment to contemporary design and its global and local contexts, a passion for building, and desire to test the premises of the interior, theoretically as well as practically.

The course addresses the needs of graduates from interior, spatial and architectural backgrounds where traditional roles are increasingly blurred and design skills may be needed in a variety of guises. It emphasises generic and transferable skills in design of the built environment, and locates the subject in this broader context to encourage you to seek and create opportunities for the practice of their discipline.

You'll want to imbue your work with meaning, to use it to communicate, to engage emotions and inspire response. Interiors are designed to be attractive and desirable in the marketplace and relevant to consumers, meaning you'll need an exhaustive overview of current and forthcoming furniture products in order to be competitive.

Design and research occupy a large proportion of the course; the research and development process of design is rehearsed through your project work. In parallel with theoretical research, you'll generate, communicate and evaluate all kinds of innovative ideas and concepts for furniture. You'll discover that design research will reveal the widest range of proposals for testing, how best to inform the producer of what you have in mind and how best to evaluate concepts.

Our School of Art, Architecture and Design is a community that shares a commitment to contemporary design and its global and local contexts, a passion for design in all its forms, and desire to test the premises of the field, theoretically as well as practically. We aspire to effect real, meaningful and beneficial change through our design work and MA Interior Design is a part of that vision.