The first year supports a foundational approach to the study of the interior providing a structure to experiment and explore creative ideas through different cultural themes. Students are then invited to examine and develop these ideas in response to the fundamental elements and principles of the interior. These elements have been split into three key focus areas Identities, Proximities and Inhabitation. This year we embraced the disperse realities and confusion of times by going fictional with Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel (The Shining, 1980) as host building and having Babel as overarching theme. With biblical, fictional and even computational instances, the many tales of Babel remain current and particularly relevant. The task was to enquiry through the lens of the interior its many aspects: questions of language, gender, power, labour, inclusiveness, totality, sustainability, human greed, doomed spaces, etc.

IDENTITIES (Autum Term) _ Babel’s Portal

Surfaces, matter and materiality, both applied and found, are the detailed and inscribed overlays that set up narratives for the stories of proximities and inhabitation. A successful detail or a constructed identity will be able to portray an account of the entire content and trajectory of a project. The legacy of such material considerations and their application will also form the basis for any future appropriations of a site. The creation of distinct and significant identities forms the fundamental understandings of a designed interior space. 

PROXIMITIES (Spring Term) _ Babelian Refuge

Site, place, situations, locations, contexts and relationships between people, communities and buildings, along with the spatial and atmospheric interfaces between them, all are proximities that can provide agencies to influence the design of the interior. The analysis and understanding of these proximities affords the designer the possibility to generate new meanings, understandings, spaces and elements. The documentation and subsequent translation of this material can be utilised to affect the design of the new interior. 

INHABITATIONS (Summer Term) _ Babel’s Retreat

Occupancy, interactions, participation, dwelling, their edges, lines and boundaries, are forms of inhabitation that can be analysed and developed to create new ways of thinking about being in the built environment. These can be reflected in a number of ways, ranging from designing new and innovative uses of space through to the adaptation of existing buildings, elements, spaces for new forms of inhabitation. 

At the mid-point of the year the School-wide ‘Work In-Progress’ exhibition provides an opportunity to share the programme’s activities with the rest of the College is used to show the college what the programme is undertaking. 

All of year one is underpinned by Media Studies which forms part of the MA Architecture, City Design, Environmental Architecture and Interior Design Programmes.

The unit examines how the analysis and use of media can help develop our critical understanding of spatial design, Students utilise a vast range of media and conceptual approaches – including photography, filmmaking, sculpture, graphic design, photogrammetry, performance and product design and fabrication – to explore and develop their work, alongside this menu, a weekly series of lectures, talks, seminars that underpin the current project being undertaken with key ideas, texts, theories and discussions. 

A yearlong dissertation is undertaken in the CHS module.

 

Visiting  Critics:

Natalie Badenduck
Kevin Brennan
Natalie Christensen
Jym Eyre
Joao Guarantini
Peter Higgins
Roxana Hu
Boryana Ilieva
Ben Kelly
Qianyi Lin
Roy Lowe
Katherin Skelton
Sophie Ungerer