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.

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 affords you the possibilities to challenge your thinking through research, design, exploration in order 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 across multiple spatial design disciplines, Media Studies provides a rigorous and granular examination of historical and contemporary methodologies of media practice and research. 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 own 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 the design of the interior.

Platforms themes are the provocations or generators of ideas that you will utilise in the development of your own research and projects. It is anticipated that you will use the Platforms interests to assist in the determination of your own practice interests and ultimately your professional identities.

School-wide elective (15 credits)

You choose one elective from the options given below.

Terms 1&2

AcrossRCA (College-wide unit) (30 credits)

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA. This unit aims to support you to meet the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in cross-programme interdisciplinary teams. In your team you will develop a self-initiated themed project, informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to collectively use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action, and help demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits)

The purpose of the Independent Research Project is to enable you to apply the intellectual, technical and professional skills that 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 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.

The provocations provided by the Platforms should be utilised in order to assist in the determination of your own practice interests and ultimately your professional ambitions and responsibilities and identities as a practising designer. The IRP will contain an externally-facing element, for instance an exhibition of work. This is in order to enable participants to benchmark their work in a professional context.

This MA is delivered over 45 weeks.

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.