Spatial and Interior Design - BA (Hons)

This module focuses on embedding employability within a design curriculum in a seamless and meaningful way within the context of students' future working environments. Students will identify their own strengths and talents, form their own creative agencies and plan their own career trajectory. The aim of this module is to evaluate critically and develop a focused understanding of the practice concerns of the creative business sector. It is anticipated that students will understand the changing creative job market and be well placed to make appropriate careers decisions accordingly. The module will also have a design project that engages with the city and the urban environment. Several external talks and visits will focus on design jobs within the design sector and will provide a useful contact network for future internships and work experience.

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This module will provide a broad introduction to the important key people and ideas in the development of sustainability culture from the twentieth century to the present day. This will include an exploration of designers, artists and philosophers that have been significant in transforming our seeing and thinking. Key concept includes circular design, circular economy, system mapping, system design and system thinking.

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On this module students will be introduced to the fundamental principles of material and environment. Material, construction and environment collectively form a key pillar of knowledge for spatial and interior designers, whose role usually entails and relies on an understanding of materiality to make their creative designs tangible, presentable and built – in a form true to original concept. This module introduces students to the process of material selection (including an evaluation of the inherent qualities of materials and finishes through development of a critical approach), material specification (the process of how to accurately assign a material or finish within a spatial / interior design project), alongside the process of how materials are deployed and managed – including building an awareness of suppliers and the basic approach to constructing a physical or virtual material library. Students will learn more about materiality through lectures and workshops, but will also be expected to conduct and share research into both within the module, for the benefit of all peers.

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Non-permanent architectural structures have a long history, form and function changing with technological developments and shifting societal needs and desires. In this module students will investigate this development through lectures and seminars and practice based exercises. Nomadic tent structures, market stalls, festival stages and stadium shows that arrive in a dozen articulated wagons will be investigated in terms of social context, habitation and transportation. The structural geometry of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and tensegrity will inform student's work with an emphasis on craft and simple engineering. This will involve hands on exploration of materials, structures, construction techniques, fixings and function. Finding out how structures remain stable, students will engage in thinking and learning through making. Multiple re-use and environmental sustainability will be an important consideration.

Students will design and develop modular systems that can have various functions and applications. For example; exhibition stands, display units, pop up retail units. The modular system will be experimental and may be realised in a combination of materials at different scales.

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This module examines the theory and practice behind the history, development and future trends of adapt and reuse in our existing ‘environments’, exploring how a variety of traditional and new technologies and techniques can be used to insert, intervene and appropriate space in time to a new audience. 

The module is based around an initial series of case studies, visits and seminars, some which may take advantage of the Historic Dockyard by way of on-site case-study workshops. Other case studies will include the adapt and reuse spaces of major cultural institutions in London and the South East.

Once the theoretical groundwork has been covered, you will go on to design your own intervention in response to a design brief. This may take the form of conceptual visualisations, models and narrative storyboards to generate ideas for the creation of an innovative and narrative space in an existing site or building.

This module provides the student with an opportunity to design and realise a major spatial and/or interior design project (or coherent extract thereof) derived from their own developing interests and skills. It gives the student the opportunity to have significant control over the brief, their input and the outcome, affording them a significantly independent experience.

The module also introduces the student to lecturers acting as supervisors, with whom they negotiate their project brief and receive ongoing support.  The module also asks students to develop their practice-based work towards a final outcome which may take the form of interior design, scenography, exhibition design, experience design and event design.

This module continues from the previous module to provide students with an opportunity to technically resolve the details of their design intervention. The design and integrated technical resolution must therefore be contextual and developed with reference to heritage, historical and social context of the existing built environment, as well as adapt and reuse strategy. This practical design project is supported by both lectures, seminars and workshops.

The module also introduces the student to lecturers acting as consultants, with whom they negotiate their project brief and receive ongoing support.  They will also be considering where in the design field they wish to gain employment and to see this project as a calling card for future employers. The discussions of subject, context (client, location and audience) and realisation are crucial to the process.

This module introduces students to independent research project development and structures.

It will cover academic and practice research and the relationship between the two, how each area can inform, develop and progress the other. The module will enable students to develop either an extended individual design practice project, or a dissertation (Extended Essay) on contemporary or historical developments in design and communication culture the following term.

Students will be expected to engage with independent and critical thinking and advance their research skills.