Overview
Designing from the inside out
Key details
- 180 credits
- 1 year / 45 week programme
- Full-time study
School or Centre
Location
- Kensington
Next open event
- 25 Nov 2024
- Visit Online Portfolio Week
Round 1 application deadline
- 13 Jan 2025
Explore interior design from the room to the city
- Benefit from our forward-thinking approach to the built environment with our unique programme structure
- Learn from a diverse group of leading interior designers, thinkers and researchers, each offering a different angle
- Develop your own voice through our student-centred teaching methods and supportive community
How can interior design address climate change and social injustice? On our cutting-edge programme, you’ll consider the spatial and environmental aspects of buildings but also explore the implications of different forms of inhabitation, materialities, identities and diversity viewpoints.
We’ve created a distinctive course structure where you’ll explore three platforms of interior design, focused on reuse, materiality and future practices. Speculate about what’s on the horizon, examine what can be repurposed and analyse the potential of materials.
Thinking through making
In today’s predominantly digital society, there’s something special about working with your hands. In our studios and workshops, you’ll gain experience of constructing installations and ‘thinking through making’, as well as digital experience. We’ll encourage you to question, experiment and challenge your processes.
Interior designers enjoy a wide range of opportunities. You could go on to work in a cultural context, an exhibition space or a work-related, leisure or retail setting. You may find a role in a large design practice, set up on your own or pursue further research.
Catch the replays from our latest online Open Day.
Gallery
Staff
Facilities
The School of Architecture is currently based at our historic Kensington site.
View all facilitiesOur studios are the heart of day-to-day activity for the School. Studios are purpose-designed for inspiration and interaction between students of different design disciplines. Studio workspace is provided for each student. In addition, you have access to wood, metal, plastic and resin workshop facilities, as well as contemporary digital fabrication equipment and a suite of bookable project and making spaces.
Our alumni
Our alumni form an international network of creative individuals who have shaped and continue to shape the world. Click on each name to find out more.
Where will the RCA take you?Student and alumni stories
More details on what you'll study.
Find out what you'll cover in this programme.
What you'll cover
How you'll learn
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.
Programme structure
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
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.
Requirements
What you need to know before you apply
Candidates are selected entirely on merit and applications are welcomed from all over the world. The selection process will consider creativity, imagination and innovation as demonstrated in your portfolio and video, as well as your potential to benefit from the programme and to achieve high MA standards overall.
You will usually have a good undergraduate degree or other appropriate experience. Professional experience, either before during or after a first degree, may be a benefit. We welcome applications from candidates from other related backgrounds, such as architecture, furniture design, product design and graphic design.
What's needed from you
Portfolio requirements
We would like you to submit a one single compiled PDF portfolio, which must include at least five of your own projects. If any projects are collaborative or group-based then please make this clear.
We require the first project in the portfolio to express what you consider to be the work that encompasses all of your best attributes.
The portfolio should contain images, drawings, models, process work and a description of the interior space that you are inspired by. It must contain a succinct description as to why it is important to you and how it has inspired your work.
- All projects should demonstrate, research, process, resolution and succinct communication demonstrating the journey of the work.
- Demonstrate skills, particularly an aptitude for thinking through making
- Include work that is analogue as well as digital, work that is three- as well as in two-dimensions
- All projects should have well-edited, concise written descriptions in the spaces provided.
- Professional work to be included (if applicable)
- Include photography of spaces that you have designed that have been built (if applicable) The portfolio must be edited and arranged in a graphically coherent and elegant manner
Personal statement
Please provide a 300-word written personal statement that addresses the following points:
- Introduce yourself, your interests and your motivations for applying to the Royal College of Art, and to this programme in particular.
- Briefly summarise any educational background and professional experience to date that will support your application.
- Tell us what you want to do in the future.
Your journey: video requirements
- We ask that you upload a two-minute video recorded on your phone or laptop, speaking to us directly. High production qualities are not needed. We will review the work in your portfolio, so keep your video simple.
- Express coherently why you want to study Interior Design at the RCA. What motivates you to be a designer of interior space?
- What do you wish to achieve from the course, and how do you think it will assist you in accomplishing this aim?
- Complement the work in your portfolio by taking your strongest project and describing succinctly what your aim was, and how did the project achieve it.
- Describe the inspirational project in your portfolio to us and express why it stimulates you. Eloquently describe the biggest challenge you think you will face on the programme at the RCA and we would like to hear you describe where you see yourself and what you hope to be doing in five years’ time.
English-language requirements
If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country you will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic or UKVI score of 6.5 with a 6.0 in the Test of Written English (TWE) and at least 5.5 in other skills. Students achieving a grade of at least 6.0, with a grade of 5.5 in the Test of Written English, may be eligible to take the College’s English for Academic Purposes course to enable them to reach the required standard.
You are exempt from this requirement if you have received a 2.1 degree or above from a university in a majority English-speaking nation within the last five years.
If you need a Student Visa to study at the RCA, you will also need to meet the Home Office’s minimum requirements for entry clearance.
Fees & funding
For this programme
Fees for new students
Fees for September 2025 entry on this programme are outlined below. From 2021 onward, EU students are classified as Overseas for tuition fee purposes.
Home
Overseas and EU
Deposit
New entrants to the College will be required to pay a non-refundable deposit in order to secure their place. This will be offset against the tuition fees.
Home
Overseas and EU
Progression discount
For alumni and students who have completed an RCA Graduate Diploma and progress onto an RCA Master's programme – MA, MA/MSc, MFA, MDes, MArch, MEd or MRes – within 10 years, a progression discount of £1,000 is available.
* Total cost is based on the assumption that the programme is completed in the timeframe stated in the programme details. Additional study time may incur additional charges.
Scholarships
Scholarships
The RCA scholarship programme is growing, with hundreds of financial awards planned for the 2024/5 academic year. Examples of financial awards offered in 2023/24 are given below.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholarship
For: All MA programmes, MArch, MFA, MDes, MRes & MEd
Eligibility criteria: Students from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, USA
Eligible fee status: Overseas fee status
Value: £7,000 towards fees
The Deputy Vice Chancellor’s EU Scholarship
For: All MA programmes, MArch, MFA, MDes, MRes & MEd
Eligibility criteria: Students from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey
Eligible fee status: Overseas fee status
Value: £7,000 towards fees
The Deputy Vice Chancellor’s UK Scholarship
For: All MA programmes, MArch, MFA, MDes, MRes & MEd
Eligible fee status: Home fee status
Value: £5,000 towards fees
Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships
For: All programmes excluding PhD & short courses
Eligibility criteria: Black or Black British Caribbean, Black or Black British African, Other Black Background, Mixed - White and Black Caribbean, Mixed - White and Black African
Eligible fee status: Home fee status
Value: Full fees & maintenance
The Vice-Chancellor’s UK Cost of Living Scholarship
For: All MA programmes, MArch, MFA, MDes, MRes & MEd
Eligible fee status: Home fee status
Value: £5,000 for living costs
World of Interiors Bursary
For: MA Interior Design
Eligible fee status: Home fee status
Value: £10,000 towards fees
House of Fraser Bursary
For: Any MA programme
Eligible fee status: Home fee status
Value: £10,000 towards fees
Applying for a scholarship
You must hold an offer to study on an RCA programme in order to make a scholarship application in Spring 2024. A selection of RCA merit scholarships will also be awarded with programme offers.
We strongly recommend that you apply for your programme as early as possible to stand the best chance of receiving a scholarship. You do not apply directly for individual awards; instead, you will be invited to apply once you have received an offer.
More information
Additional fees
In addition to your programme fees, please be aware that you may incur other additional costs associated with your study during your time at RCA. Additional costs can include purchases and services (without limitation): costs related to the purchase of books, paints, textiles, wood, metal, plastics and/or other materials in connection with your programme, services related to the use of printing and photocopying, lasercutting, 3D printing and CNC. Costs related to attending compulsory field trips, joining student and sport societies, and your Convocation (graduation) ceremony.
If you wish to find out more about what type of additional costs you may incur while studying on your programme, please contact the Head of your Programme to discuss or ask at an online or in person Open Day.
We provide the RCASHOP online, and at our Kensington and Battersea Campuses – this is open to students and staff of the Royal College of Art only to provide paid for materials to support your studies.
We also provide support to our students who require financial assistance whilst studying, including a dedicated Materials Fund.
External funding
There are many funding sources, with some students securing scholarships and others saving money from working. It is impossible to list all the potential funding sources; however, the following information could be useful.
Payments
Tuition fees are due on the first day of the academic year and students are sent an invoice prior to beginning their studies. Payments can be made in advance, on registration or in two instalments.
Start your application
Change your life and be here in 2025. Applications now open.
The Royal College of Art welcomes applicants from all over the world.
Before you begin
Make sure you've read and understood the entrance requirements and key dates
More information about eligibility and key datesCheck you have all the information you need to apply.
Read our application process guideConsider attending an Open Day, or one of our portfolio or application advice sessions
See upcoming sessionsPlease note, all applications must be submitted by 12 noon on the given deadline.
Ask a question
Get in touch if you’d like to find out more or have any questions.
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