The new MA in Interior Design is offered as an opportunity for graduates to extend their thinking on ‘altering architecture’*, i.e. that interior design is the site of spatial and physical intervention within existing buildings. We believe that interior design occupies a unique position, combining the functional and the inspirational, the spatial and the object, the abstract and the concrete – all at a human scale. It has the potential to alter and radically improve the way we work, shop, relax, learn, live and die; it is a powerful commercial, political and social tool. At its best, it respects function and imagination, innovation, the latest technology and an appreciation and respect for poetry and craft.
Led by Head of Programme Ab Rogers, the two-year Interior Design programme runs in parallel with the Architecture programme, with separate and related areas of production to include lectures, seminars, group work and individual thesis work. These are offered in the unique RCA studio context of interdisciplinary, workshop-oriented, speculative study. The course encourages the development of solutions. It promotes design that re-invents and improves the space it occupies, enhancing the emotional experience it offers and shaping the way its users interact with architecture.
Students investigate what is embraced by the 'realm of the interior' and how design can comfort or provoke, create harmony or discord. In parallel to the technical demands of a space run the emotional necessities, therefore designers must learn to understand the human impact of design and then deliver it with technical perfection. The realm of the interior includes shops, museums, a space station, a train carriage, a boat or an installation. All interior environments need design, and the Interior Design programme at the RCA examines, debates, discusses and challenges every aspect and angle of these varied notions of interior space. It also includes the interior viewed through the screen – be it a television, a cinema or a computer, the virtual interior that embraces and encourages interaction.
The programme is delivered by practising designers, architects and theorists, all of whom are international leaders in their fields. Students have the opportunity to utilise a diverse range of processes and techniques in their work, on the understanding that contemporary digital technology married with traditional approaches delivers a well-rounded and wide-ranging vocabulary and skill set.
There are opportunities for industry-connected live projects and research. A dynamic lecture series offers talks by practitioners as well as communicators, commentators and artists from related disciplines – set design, architecture, branding, engineering, science, psychology, literature and fine art. The MA course culminates in the RCA degree show, where completing students exhibit their work to the art and design world.
* From the book Altering Architecture by Fred Scott
Download Interior Design Programme Information Pack (PDF).
Open Days are held at the College between October and January of each academic year, to enable applicants to explore teaching programmes and meet staff and students.