BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design

Through the adaptive reuse, rebranding, remodelling, recycling and re-communication of existing spaces, structures and environments, BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design offers you the skills, knowledge and work experience that you need to become a leader in one of the most dynamic, creative, economically valuable and diverse areas of design.

Interior Architecture and Design has an enviable record in graduate employment, often working with clients on real design projects in a studio-based, professionally focused learning environment.

We offer you the chance to gain extended work experience in an optional placement year to get under the skin of an industry, organisation and the role to assist you with making better-informed decisions about your future career prospects.

This course will teach you to understand the three-dimensional potential, the atmosphere, and the identity of the spaces in which we live, work, rest, and play, placing a strong emphasis on sustainability, environmental and social responsibility into the projects.

All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.

If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.

Understanding the interior, 'The individual dimension'

Level 4 aims to generate a fundamental understanding of space: its analysis, theoretical manipulation, habitation, technological construction and materiality and scale.

At this level, you'll concentrate on acquiring fundamental skills essential for your progression throughout subsequent years of study and into professional practice. This foundational period is characterised by an emphasis on mastering core abilities and techniques integral to the disciplines. Through structured course work and hands-on experiences, you'll cultivate a solid understanding of key principles, methodologies, and tools relevant to the interior architecture and design discipline.

During the first year, you'll understand the principle of a user-centred approach within the field of Interior Architecture and Design. This approach places importance on understanding and accommodating the needs, preferences, and experiences of people as central to the design, operation, and delivery of services within interior spaces.

Additionally, you'll be introduced to Careers and Enterprise activities appropriate to this Level.

Up-thinking the interior, 'The community dimension'

Level 5 aims to consolidate and refine the skills delivered at Level 4 and encourage you to develop your own methods of realisation and visualisation. Your second year has been designed to enhance your development both creatively and professionally.

Technical knowledge (construction/light/sound/materiality) will also be further developed with design units being used to demonstrate how your knowledge and critical understanding of the well-established principles of interior architecture and design have developed.

Technological developments and developments in the nature of interior practice will be explored such as the communication of semiotics, atmosphere and identity, ideas of brand and image, interactivity, the real and the virtual.

In Level 5, design will progress from the concentration on the personal and intimate at Level 4 to ideas of community – and the deeper understanding of scale, complexity and hierarchy in space that this will necessitate. By adopting a community-centred approach, interior architecture and design interventions aim to foster inclusivity and accessibility within built environments. This approach seeks to create holistic solutions that cater to diverse community needs and facilitate collaborative partnership among stakeholders.

Also in Level 5, there'll be a deliberate emphasis on utilising theory as a fundamental tool for the design process. Through theoretical exploration and analyses, you'll harness conceptual frameworks to inform and enrich your design decisions, fostering depth and sophistication in your creative work

The course in general at Level 5 allows for interdisciplinary collaborations across different courses, schools or external partners, this allows a culture of collaboration to develop amongst students.

Additionally, you'll be introduced to Careers and Enterprise activities appropriate to this Level.

The optional placement year offers the students the opportunity to get under the skin of an industry, organisation, and role to assist you with making better-informed decisions about your future career prospects. Undertaking a placement will ensure students to take personal responsibility for tasks, duties, and projects within a real-world work scenario. The placement year will be recognised on the degree transcript.

Redefining the interior

Your final year is your opportunity to bring all your learning, skills and knowledge together in the production of a package of professionally orientated, creative work that will examine and emphasise your research theme.

One of the fundamental strengths of the course is that it does not attempt to define the interior for you, rather it encourages you, over three years, to challenge, theorise, conceptualise, realise and visualise your notion of the “interior” in contemporary society: in other words we encourage you, in your final year, to look at what the interior can be.

Units at Level 6 will look to consolidate this approach through the work that has been undertaken at Levels 4 and 5. In addition, the course will encourage you to build on your Level 5 experience to contextualise the work in a professional studio environment that emphasises practice, law and the ethical and ecological roles and responsibilities of you as a designer.

At the end of the year, you'll have produced a comprehensive body of written and design work that'll demonstrate to both specialist and non-specialist audiences your practical and thinking skills and intellectual and critical engagement in the complex design of interior spaces.

Having undertaken this work in a professional setting, you'll evidence your readiness for the move to either practice or postgraduate study and you'll be proud of what you have achieved.

2024 TP Bennett Award

• Winner | Overall Best Project – Erin Stephenson
• Winner | Technical Excellence – Molly Gransbury
• Winner | Creative Excellence – Oliver Dewes

• Longlisted | Interior Futures – Dahnya Sandhu, Julia Kubior, Raquel Di Cori
• Longlisted | Social Justice – Erin Stephenson, Molly Gransbury
• Longlisted | Writing Award – Julia Kubior

2024 — Winner | Architects for Health Award, Judge's Special Category – Molly Gransbury

2023 — Shortlisted | Arts Thread Global Design Graduate Show, Product/Architecture/Interiors – Femke Burley

2022 — Shortlisted | Creative Conscience Award, Architecture, Engineering, and Interior Design – Isabella Williams

2021 — Winner | Architects for Health Award, Best Project for Interior Design – Tom Pritchard, Isabella Williams

As a course, we've also been selected as finalists in the HSJ 2022 Awards for Integrated Care System of the Year for our work with Our Dorset on the Think Big initiative.

On graduating from BA (Hons) Interior Architecture and Design, students find that their studies have prepared them to take-on the challenge of an increasingly diverse creative sector: design companies such as Terry Farrell and Partners, Conran Design and Black Sheep have offered opportunities and internships; international brands, such as Wedgwood, and high-profile, international, communications agencies such as Exposure are working with our students.

The course prides itself on its success in promoting work experience for students and graduates; the variety of positions that the students achieve are a reflection of the philosophy of the course, namely that the study of Interior Architecture and Design is broad, dynamic and exciting and allows you, the student, to work to your strengths and follow the path that is best suited to you.

The breadth of areas covered on the course enables graduates to have a wide variety of career opportunities open to them such as: architecture, interior architecture, interior design, set and stage design, point of sale display and exhibition design.

During the course, students have worked for organisations as varied as the English National Opera and even Formula 1. Here are some examples of companies that our graduates are working for:

• Studio Tilt
• OB Architecture Ltd
• Michael Grubb Studio
• Focus Design
• NIO Architects
• Design Unlimited
• TP Bennett Studio