Program Overview

Program Overview

The BA (Hons) Interior Design with Integrated Foundation is a four-year program that introduces students to the interior design industry and beyond. The program focuses on creativity, context, client, and conscious design, developing students' ability to create change through adaptive spaces, inclusive environments, and sustainable thinking.

Program Structure

The program consists of three building blocks: Subject Core, Special Electives, and Common Modules, including Industry & Entrepreneurship. The Integrated Foundation option provides a solid grounding in academic skills and principles, as well as an introduction to the subject area.

Foundation Year

The Foundation year includes modules such as:

• The Creative Designer: introduces the design cycle, exploring concepts such as idea generation, research principles, and production practices.
• Writing for Success at University: develops writing skills and knowledge to prepare students for success at university.
• Critical Thinking: improves critical thinking and reflecting skills, evaluating information, investigating what is true, and determining strong arguments from weak.
• Cultural Understanding: studies a range of cultural industries, tracing how ideas develop from inception to materialization, and explaining the values that underpin cultural output.
• Politics, Society and Citizenship: introduces the basic principles of politics, society, and citizenship, exploring political values and debating real-world problems.
• The Creative in Context: develops understanding of the scale and breadth of contemporary forms and practices within the broader design environment.
• Communications: improves communication skills, evaluating the way communication works to convey ideas, and practicing observation, context, and empathy.
• Creativity and Entrepreneurship: critically evaluates how creativity contributes to successful entrepreneurship practice, covering topics such as innovative organizations, entrepreneurial creativity, and decision-making.
• Cultural Industries: studies a range of cultural industries, whether contemporary or historical, local or global, explaining the values that underpin cultural output.
• Making Use of Data: provides a conceptual appreciation of the nature of data, its many forms, and how it is used to enhance daily working processes.

Year 1

Year 1 includes modules such as:

• Design: Spatial Investigations: explores the fundamental elements of the interior design process, generating ideas to detailed resolution.
• Reading Spaces: explores fundamental interior design principles, developing a rich design vocabulary and understanding of the poetic and practical qualities of spaces.
• Design: Inhabitation: introduces a dynamic process of investigation and analysis in design thinking and practical problem-solving, designing a more complex spatial proposal.
• Representing Spaces: develops creative research and critical analytical skills, reflecting on work and communicating ideas visually and verbally.
• Exploring Industry and Entrepreneurship: introduces the changes being experienced in the world of work, developing an understanding of how changing local and global trends impact the current and future worlds of work.
• Learning Perspectives: encourages students to become collaborative, critical, and reflective learners, examining core questions about how and why we learn.

Year 2

Year 2 includes modules such as:

• Design: Events: develops a real-world event design, considering site, context, brief, event planning, and associated design elements.
• Narrative Spaces: enhances understanding of the design process, expanding abilities in effective communication, creative research, critical thinking, and professional skills.
• Design: Adaptation: develops design explorations, creatively and positively intervening with an existing building, transforming it for a new context and use.
• Entrepreneurial Challenge: develops entrepreneurial thinking, exploring enterprise opportunities, and creating an entrepreneurial plan.
• Placement: provides an opportunity to experience industry and entrepreneurship in an external organization, applying knowledge and skills to real-life challenges.
• Industry Challenge: experiences the challenge and pace of the world of work through a real-world or live project, chosen from a menu of industry scenarios.

Year 3

Year 3 includes modules such as:

• Design: Exploration: engages in creative problem-solving, developing a detailed design response to a given brief and an existing site.
• Design: Realisation: focuses on a detailed part of the final design proposal, investigating how design ideas and concepts can be translated into resolved, real-world propositions.
• Major Project I: develops a proposal for the Major Project, supported by tutors, and begins work on the project, learning through individual or group supervision, workshops, or studio practice.
• Major Project II: realizes and completes the work in Major Project II, applying discipline-specific and interdisciplinary learning, together with learning about industry and/or entrepreneurship, to a topic of choice.

Special Electives

Students can choose from a range of Special Electives, including:

• Creativity and Imagination
• Being Human
• Creating a Brand Identity
• Why We Post: Social Media and Us
• Financial Innovation and Technology
• Photography Workshop
• How to Think in a Post-Truth World
• Understanding Human Rights
• Literary London
• Behind the Lens: Introduction to Media Production
• Psychology of Emotions
• London as Fashion Capital
• Emerging Technologies: from Web3 to the Metaverse
• Digital Design with Adobe Creative Suite
• The Power of Language in Your Life
• Business Ethics
• Experiencing Theatre
• Understanding the Global Art Market
• Inspiring Your Audience
• Future Cities Now

Languages

Students can choose from a range of languages, including:

• Arabic
• Chinese
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Business English

Tuition Fees

The tuition fee for the program is £23,000 per year, fixed for the duration of the course.

Careers

The program prepares students for a range of careers, including interior design, interior architecture, spatial design, workplace design, exhibition design, set design, product design, furniture design, retail design, design research, publishing, adaptive reuse, and heritage design. Alumni have gone on to work for renowned brands and set up their own agencies.