The MA in Interior Design will offer an all-encompassing, multidisciplinary exploration of the realm of the interior in its totality.

The diversity of the constituent elements that create an interior mean that, by its very nature, its design must result from collaboration across a multitude of disciplines. There is the overall design of a space and infrastructure; and then the contents – the furniture, industrial design elements (door handles to light fittings), the textiles, the graphic interventions of wayfinding, signage, moving image and illustration; and the atmospheric considerations – acoustics, air, lighting. All contribute to the final experience. Detail is everything.

Students will 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, museum exhibitions, restaurants, hotels, theatre sets, films and offices, as well as transportation – be it a car, an aeroplane, a space station, a train carriage, a boat or an installation.

All interior environments need design and the Interior Design course at the RCA will examine, debate, discuss and challenge 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.

Students will 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.

The course will build strong alliances with other creative institutions, international, commercial and experimental. Research-based collaborations are key to ensuring the programme is as relevant and forward-thinking as possible.

The College is known for its important links with industry and the Interior Design course will be no exception. It will draw on the full facilities offered to all students of design across the College, celebrating the exceptional world, knowledge and opportunities the RCA offers to maximise experience and expand horizons.

The programme will teach students to:

1. Read a design brief in such a way as to respond to its inherent challenges, seek its furthest parameters and explore the most radical potential for creativity contained in its contents.
2. Create a process of design that is both conceptual, crafted and unique to the individual.
3. Bring an intellectually rigorous, open-minded and research-based approach to the design of the interior.
4. Create work that challenges what is accepted and invents new typologies of interior design aimed to encompass all kinds of space – from hospitals to hotels, submarines to sailboats, trains compartments to ticket booths.
5. Create multidisciplinary design solutions that fuse science, craft and philosophy.
6. Design interiors based on dedication to their designated purpose or function so that it is elevated and celebrated by the quality of the design.
7. Adopt a humanist approach to interior design, looking at the human elements at the heart of the space and how design can enhance people’s relationship with their surroundings.
8. Focus on how design can stimulate the senses – using materials, processes, colours, textures and details to create sensorially evocative spaces.
9. Engage with design details at 1:1, becoming comfortable with investigating, crafting solutions and solving problems in real terms with real materials.
10. Examine the interior and all its components – graphics, industrial design elements, textile, fashion, furniture, etc. in order to create integrated solutions where all interior elements are in harmony with each other.
11. Investigate the importance of flexible and temporary structures – looking at pop-ups and ways to build flexibility into a structure to allow for economical reinvention of the space.
12. Find new ways to examine and communicate space, looking at the relationship between architecture and the interior and process of interrogation and representation which are necessarily unique to the interior discipline.