Interior Cultures module (DJ51049)

​​Interior Cultures explores the interior through a cultural lens and situates the interior and its practice as a contested field. You'll encounter thinkers, researchers, and practitioners who operate across art, design, and architecture, and who challenge what an expanded interior practice can be in a complex world. 

​Working at an advanced level, you'll engage with interiors as sites of cultural significance and reinvention and work on studio projects that draw on spatial theory, contextual site analysis, adaptive reuse, and participatory design. You'll work across physical and digital making, using analogue processes and emerging technologies. 

​You'll collaborate with international networks on intercultural briefs, responding to specific sites and cultural stakeholders and produce sophisticated spatial outcomes that combine images, objects, texts, video, and sound and be submitted for competitions, exhibitions and workshop. 

​What you will learn 

​In this module, you will: 

• ​Develop advanced interior practice through experimental and speculative studio projects 
• ​Work with international networks and respond to international cultural briefs 
• ​Explore physical and digital making, analogue processes and emerging AI-influenced approaches 
• ​Build skills in communication and presentation for professional and research audiences 

​By the end of this module, you will be able to: 

• ​Demonstrate critical understanding of advanced interior research in art, design, and architecture 
• ​Identify, analyse, and reinterpret research on interior cultures in case studies sites, and processes 
• ​Evidence substantial creative process using multiple methods and a wide range of media 
• ​Present and defend advanced spatial outcome to external audiences 
• ​Document and share outcomes digitally to a professional standard 
• ​Plan, research, and realise an advanced interior investigation with autonomy and self-direction​

Assignments / assessments

​​Coursework (100%) 

• ​Formal presentation of a substantial and creatively advanced folio of expanded interior practice reflecting one or more studio project supported by a substantial body of experimentation and process 
• ​a substantive written statement which critically and theoretically contextualises your studio practice against significant research and site contexts 

​This module does not have a final exam.​

Teaching methods / timetable

• ​​Studio tutorials in support of projects 
• ​2D and 3D CAD sessions 
• ​contextual talks, lectures and seminars (as determined by the project brief) 
• ​Self-directed study (320 hours)

​You will mainly learn within a creative studio environment where you will engage in: 

• ​individual/group tutorials 
• ​peer-to-peer learning 
• ​site visits/client meetings

​Other types of teaching can take place in: 

• ​lecture theatres 
• ​digital media labs 
• ​workshops, e.g. wood workshops and digital making facilities 
• ​participate in student-led industry evening events to enhance your employability

​The module runs in collaboration with international networks. Projects may reflect intercultural themes, issues, and/or locations. Student outcomes may be eligible for nomination to national competitions and/or be submitted for international exhibition or workshops in semester 2​.