Interior Architecture with Foundation BA Honours

Course summary

Our degree courses with Foundation year offer the opportunity to prepare you for advanced study before you progress onto a full honours degree at the University of Westminster.

Whether you're looking to expand your knowledge and skills towards degree-level study, or want to change your subject specialism, we aim to encourage a broad range of students to undertake our Foundation year to progress onto full honours degree with us.

Our Foundation year in Architecture and Design offers an introduction to the creative professions that shape the design of interiors, buildings and urban spaces. Through design projects you'll learn about the spatial, technical and cultural issues, and develop the grounding skills and creative practices necessary for further study. The first semester begins with an exploration of the design and inhabitation of urban space, followed by a materials and making project based in the Fabrication Laboratory, our outstanding Marylebone campus workshop facility. Running alongside these will be studio and field-based exercises to develop your drawing and creative skills. In the second semester, a project on the design of existing spaces will be followed by the development of a creative work driven by your own interests. Students from the Foundation will have the opportunity to exhibit in the School of Architecture and Cities summer exhibition. Your practical development will be accompanied by modules in both semesters on academic skills in writing and critical thinking.

On successful completion of the Foundation year, you'll be able to move on to study for the Interior Architecture BA Honours degree over a further three years of study.

Interior architecture is a distinct and separate discipline to architecture. Its specific focus is the creation of innovative and exciting interior spaces, primarily through the adaptation and spatial manipulation of existing buildings.

The course is concerned not just with physical intervention but also with how space is understood and occupied. The course implicitly embeds issues of sustainability, through its concern with reuse, and refurbishment, as well as the critical ability to respond appropriately to a given context.

It is interdisciplinary in its outlook and acknowledges the importance of other closely related areas, including interior design, exhibition design, set and lighting design, retail and product design, interior conservation as well as multidisciplinary and traditional design practice.

The Interior Architecture BA course is designed to equip you with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge required to pursue a career in interior architecture and design-related fields and/or go on to further awards in tertiary education, most typically a Master's qualification.

The design modules promote creativity, aesthetic sensibility and intellectual enquiry, together with the skills needed to work individually and in groups in developing design proposals.

The work produced in the design studios forms the basis of your design portfolio through which you will prepare for practice/employment, or in support of your application for postgraduate study. Technical skills, cultural context, design management and economics, and the commercial aspect of interiors necessary for practice are integrated with design projects.

Top reasons to study with us

• State-of-the-art facilities, including designated studio spaces open 7 days a week at our Marylebone Campus, creating a vibrant academic and creative studio culture. Our fully staffed workshops are equipped with CNC, laser-cutting and rapid prototyping equipment.
• Extracurricular projects – you'll have opportunities to work on live projects with real clients, live competitions and exhibitions beyond the classroom. Recent collaborators have included the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Freud Museum London and Battersea Arts Centre.
• Extracurricular workshops – previous workshops have included a steam-bending workshop with Samuli Naamanka Design Finland, a papercrete workshop with Aberrant Architecture, an art depot workshop and a workshop with local schoolchildren working with Disabled Artists Making Dis/Ordinary Space.
• Expert speakers and workshop leaders to help you develop niche, in-demand skills. Previous workshop leaders have included a lighting designer, a production designer, a motion graphics designer and a filmmaker.
• An International outlook – previous opportunities have included a five-day field trip to a European destination for all third years, a semester-long exchange to Australia, China and Oslo for second years, and one-off travel opportunities such as visiting the VOLA factory in Denmark or a design workshop run with students from the Pratt Institute in New York.

Course structure

You'll learn through studio discussions, seminars, individual and group tutorials, and workshops, all focused on supporting you with the development of your project work. Your learning will be enriched with studio visits to sites, exhibitions, galleries, projects and field trips.

You will be assessed through your design portfolio, design project work and an academic portfolio, along with visual and oral presentations in the form of individual or group seminars, tutorials and presentations of design project work.

You'll learn and progress by attending studio sessions and through developing design project work that involves learning to conceptualise, make architectural proposals and evaluate them.

The following subjects are indicative of what you will study on this course