Interior Design

Interior Design at the RCA explores emergent ideas and issues concerning distinct aspects of the design of the interior. This incorporates research, practice that explores the diversity of human occupation in numerous environments, extending from the room to the city. We encourage the view that the interior is an interface between its occupants and the built environment and support the notion that the interior is an agent for social change.

You'll choose to explore your propositions via one of our three platforms; superFUTURES, superMATTER and superREUSE. Each foreground design criticality with a view to the climate crises, social and spatial in/justice, bodies and space in their own way.

superREUSE explores the world as a finite resource of the existing and how to redesignate it. It takes the existing as its starting point of research, mediation and new purpose.

superMATTER is a hypothesis of the intimacy of making and inhabitation. We rejoice in the immediate sensorial experience, unveil hidden narratives and unleash the potential of materials.

superFUTURES is a research-led design studio specialising in speculative spatial design and fictions. Design is our tool for speculating upon emerging transitions in humanity and society and their relationship to space – we are poised to challenge the discipline of Interiors, not to serve the profession.

There will be several opportunities to collaborate with others, but at a minimum, your programme will include 297.5 contact hours (excluding electives) and 1502.5 independent study hours. Contact hours can consist of lectures, seminars, tutorials, critical forums and workshops, among other types of teaching delivery.

Teaching types included in your programme can consist of briefings, projects, tutorials, seminars, lectures, critical forums, technical inductions, technical workshops, offsite visits and blended learning.

Term 1

Primer (30 credits)

This unit will engage you in the exploration and synthesis of the principles and methods of critical ideas in interior space. It introduces you to ideas and the processes that will enable participants to synthesise thinking and research in the design of interior spaces. The work in this unit will be based on a focused exploration that allows you to challenge your thinking through research, design, and exploration to generate new meanings for buildings, objects, spaces and the elements within them.

Media Studies (15 credits)

Situated in the School of Architecture and welcoming a student cohort from multiple spatial design disciplines, Media Studies provides a rigorous and granular examination of historical and contemporary media practice and research methodologies. Our collective goal is to increase critical engagement with media. We achieve this through lectures, tutorials, and workshops in which new approaches to media are conceptualised, refined, and implemented in innovative proposals and projects.

Term 2

Platforms (30 credits)

This unit engages you in the origination and development of your project in relation to the thematic concerns of the programme platforms. Each platform in this unit is designed to emphasise a particular way of thinking or aspect of interior design.

Platform themes are the provocations or generators of ideas that you will utilise in developing your own research and projects. We expect you will use the platform interests to assist in the determination of your own practice interests and, ultimately, your professional identities.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits)

The Independent Research Project aims to enable you to apply the intellectual, technical and professional skills you have developed throughout the programme to a challenging self-set brief. The project will normally be advanced from the work previously undertaken in the platforms.

Working within the thematic concerns of the platforms, you are expected to have agreed on a research and project proposal, a brief, with your tutor that identifies the parameters of your project, including its aims, rationale, approaches and methodologies, and possible resource implications.

The majority of this unit will involve independent study in the platform system. This unit engages you in developing and realising your Independent Research Project (IRP). The provocations provided by the platforms should be utilised to assist in determining your practice interests and, ultimately, your professional ambitions, responsibilities, and identities as a practising designer. The IRP will contain an externally-facing element, for instance, an exhibition of work. This enables you to benchmark your work in a professional context.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.