Program Overview

Interior Architecture BA Honours

Why choose Interior Architecture BA at Middlesex?

Middlesex University's Interior Architecture BA course is a well-established, multi-faceted alternative to interior design. The course focuses on the adaptation, remodelling, and sustainable reuse of specific existing buildings, where structure and architectural consideration will empower you to reconfigure sites to dramatic effect.

What you will gain

Exploring strategies of reuse, spatial atmospheres, and materialities, architectural typologies, and hybrid uses, you will test ideas and generate proposals through a variety of analogue and digital techniques including sketching, CAD, AI, modelling-making, prototyping, and fabrication. On completion, graduates will be part of the next generation of contemporary place-makers, industry influencers, and spatial problem solvers.

What you will learn

Interior architecture is a well-established, multi-faceted alternative to interior design. Though the two disciplines are intrinsically linked, interior architecture degrees typically focus on the adaptation, remodelling, and sustainable reuse of specific existing buildings, where structure and architectural consideration will empower you to reconfigure sites to dramatic effect.

On this course, you will:

• Learn to reimagine the urban environment through architectural intervention
• Design new civic spaces that promote social cohesion including libraries, museums, educational settings, and healthcare facilities
• Learn to design incredible interiors that respond to their context and the local community
• Transform a variety of public and private spaces where you will have the opportunity to design future interiors that respond to the character and history of your host building and create new hybrid alternatives
• Explore strategies to unlock new potential and promote innovative ways inhabitants will reconnect with the ‘interior’

Modules

The curriculum focuses on seven core learning strands which are developed progressively throughout the course. You will study four compulsory modules in each year of study. Your work will be divided into credits. Each credit is equal to 10 hours of study time. You will complete 120 credits per year of study, which are broken down into modules of typically 30 credits.

Year 1

• Design Thinking and Communication (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module is an introduction to the fundamentals of design thinking and communication that enables you to prompt design ideation.
  • Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
    • Comprehend and interpret the histories, theories, cultures, and contexts of the interior to situate design thinking
    • Identify and analyse relevant primary and secondary sources to initiate design ideation
    • Use case studies to evaluate design processes, challenges, and outcomes
    • Apply an understanding of analogue and digital skills to express design ideas
• Studio: Spatial Design (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This studio-based module is an introduction to the spatial principles of the interior through a series of design tasks that enables you to understand the design process.
  • Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
    • Identify and explore the spatial principles of interior architecture and design to approach spatial design challenges
    • Articulate a design vocabulary for the interior
    • Develop analogue and digital literacies for articulating design thinking, ideation, and iteration
    • Apply an understanding of scale, proportion, and spatial arrangement
• Studio: Exploring people and place (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This studio-based module is an exploration of the cultures and contexts of the interior that allows you to focus on forms of inhabitation and placemaking.
  • Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
    • Reflect on the cultures and contexts of the interior to initiate design thinking
    • Identify research findings to inform the design process
    • Evaluate users and uses of the interior to inform the design process
    • Analyse and evaluate the relevance and significance of form, materiality, and atmosphere in the creation of the interior
    • Organise information using analogue and digital literacies
    • Apply an understanding of contemporary professional practice standards and processes
• Studio: Designing for people and place (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This studio-based module focuses on designing for people and place, with an emphasis on the impact of spatial interventions on human inhabitation.
  • Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
    • Apply an understanding of the spatial principles of interior architecture and design to inform design proposals
    • Evaluate the impact of spatial interventions on human inhabitation
    • Develop projects using interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches to the interiors
    • Explore the interdependence of users and uses of the interior
    • Organise and communicate information, using analogue and digital literacies

Year 2

• Interior Architecture Studio: Explore Public Spaces (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • Focusing on research methods and practices to inform design thinking, the module explores how people interact with their environment. Through the close analysis of case studies and critical discourse, you will be introduced to current societal issues and emerging ideas in professional practice, to explore the public interior as a shared space within the urban realm that is impacted by design intervention.
• Interior Architecture Studio: Design Public Spaces (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module focuses on designing and communicating public interiors to address the interaction between people and their environment. You support your proposals through contextual analysis, translating research findings into design projects. The module encourages you to challenge conventional designed interventions into the public realm in response to an evolving urban landscape.
• Interior Architecture: Context & Construction (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module develops an understanding of the critical role of in-depth research into the cultural, historical, political, and socio-economic contexts that underpin the practice of interior architecture, alongside the investigation of materials, construction technologies, and processes that are integral to shaping interior spaces and enriching the experience of interior environments.
• Interior Architecture Studio: Re-imagining Interiors (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module enables you to test and apply spatial design methods and practices to re-imagine the field of interior architecture practice. Working with and within existing buildings, contexts, and communities, students address real-world challenges through their interpretation of the physical environment and its underlying narratives.

Optional Sandwich Year

• Interior Placement (120 credits) - Optional
  • You will gain employment experience to provide an insight into the work, methods, and operation of a professional design practice.
  • Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
    • Design processes and practice in a professional context
    • Demonstrate knowledge of materials and building technologies
    • Apply the knowledge of the nature and operation of a professional design practice or office
    • Generate professional design communication ideas and proposals
    • Reflect on professional design practice and identify career and development pathways within the profession

Year 3/4

• Interior Architecture: Research for Design (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module introduces you to advanced research methods and practices that synthesise knowledge, understanding, and critical analysis of interior architecture as a research-led practice. Through in-depth site investigation alongside critical enquiry into adjacent contexts and issues, the module captures new knowledge and frames major project proposals.
• Interior Architecture Studio: Practices of Reuse (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module equips you with the knowledge and skills to interpret and explore the reuse of existing buildings and sites as a sustainable practice. From initial investigations into the local environment, through brief development and design ideation to the iteration of design proposals and outcomes, you will devise and test architectural interventions that foster social cohesion and inform the creation of a new social interface.
• Interior Architecture Studio: Explore Community (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module will develop your skills by helping you:
    • Explore research themes and creative pathways through strategic, detailed design development and illustrative representation
    • Analyse context and site, and engage with local communities to identify a cause or issue, and implement appropriate research-led design methods and practices to unlock and inform project proposals
• Interior Architecture Studio: Design for Community (30 credits) - Compulsory
  • This module will develop your skills by enabling you to develop complex design proposals that consolidate all aspects of your learning. This module will encourage empathetic engagement with context and community, you will reconfigure a selected site, proposing new uses that challenge how space is inhabited and experienced.

Teaching and Learning

For much of the course, you will be working on design projects, where you can apply various aspects of your learning, as well as your individual creativity and originality, to specified design tasks. Your ideas and proposals will all be tested and explored in regular tutorials and reviews, in which critical evaluation and guidance is provided through discussion and feedback, from which you will be expected to develop and improve your work.

Facilities and Support

Our Sheppard Library provides a wide range of resources and support to help you to succeed in your studies.

Careers

Graduates from our Interior Architecture BA course often fulfill design roles in interior design and architectural practices, specialist studios and consultancies, building and property companies, advisory agencies, and the design departments of public and commercial organisations.

Possible careers with a degree in Interiors include:

• Interior designer
• Interior architect
• Interior decorator
• Exhibition designer
• Space planner

Entry Requirements

At Middlesex, we're proud of how we recognize the potential of future students like you. We make fair and aspirational offers because we want you to aim high, and we’ll support you all the way.

• Qualifications
  • UCAS Tariff Points: 112 UCAS tariff points
  • A-level: BBC-BBB
  • BTEC Requirements: DMM-DDM
  • Access Requirements: Overall pass: must include 45 credits at level 3, of which all 45 must be at Merit or higher
  • Combinations: A combination of A-Level, BTEC, and other accepted qualifications that total 112 UCAS Tariff points
• Portfolio
  • Entry onto this course requires a review of your portfolio. For more information, please see the Portfolio tab.

Fees and Funding

The following fees are for the 2025/26 academic year:

• UK students
  • Full-time: £9,535*
  • Part-time: £79 per taught credit
• International students
  • Full-time students: £16,600
  • Part-time students: £138 per taught credit

*Depending on the duration of your study, your tuition fees for subsequent academic years may be subject to further inflationary increases (most recently, the UK government has suggested that increases may be linked to the All-Items Retail Prices Index – RPIX) in line with any additional rise in the tuition fee cap set by the UK government. Any annual increase in tuition fees will be notified to students at the earliest opportunity in advance of the academic year to which any applicable inflationary rise may apply.