MA Interior Architecture and Design

Tutors:

Delia Skinner - Course Director Jason Taylor Dr Jieling Xiao Max Karlsson Wisotsky Ana De Areia Soares Kelly Brookes Miles Weber Victoria Paterson-Burke Bruce Paget Anastasiya Luban Anna Parker Suzanne Barnes

Course Introduction

“The only source of knowledge is experience” Albert Einstein.

The MA Interior Architecture and Design programme embraces the truth that designing is a creative adventure. During the last twelve months, the World has shifted to a new pandemic paradigm, presenting the postgraduate students on this creative course, with many unpredictable personal and professional challenges. This experience has seismically altered their perception about their future career paths and acted as a catalyst for new ways of working and Designing Together.

Discourse and debate about ‘heritage’ and ‘experience’ as essential aspects in the creative process, has helped our spatial designers to explore their role as the ‘Choreographer of Sensations’ and prompted these international designers to refine their unique interior design praxes. This year more than ever, these designers have seen ‘Creativity’ as a powerful force for good and have moved towards a new collaborative, globally mindful and conscientious orientation.

For the teaching team, it has been a privilege to work closely with our student colleagues and to witness their resourcefulness, comradery and resilience. We have seen everyone in the class develop holistic life plans, whilst simultaneously refining their professional practice. By asking “What makes me tick as a Designer?”, “What contribution do I want make in the world?” and “With whom do I want to work?” our students have been able to better define their design ambitions for the future.

MAIAD class 2019-2020

Generous Support from Our Industry Champions

This year, our student colleagues have had the support of a number of industry champions like; Anna Parker (Founding Director at Intervention Architecture), Miles Weber (Founding Director of Miles Weber Architect Ltd), Suzanne Barnes (Founding Partner at Suzanne Barnes Design Partnership) and Alumni - Ana De Areia Soares (Interior Designer at Minima). Their shrewd appreciation of industry and savvy creative practice, being perceived by the postgraduates as both fascinating and inspiring.

Over the course of the year, our core teaching team, has also benefited from the specialist contributions of Max Karlsson Wisotsky, Victoria Paterson-Burke, Bruce Paget and Anastasiya Luban. Each one of these creative Architects and Designers, being dedicated to coaching, provoking and motivating their tutees towards new understandings and learning experiences. This has helped our students galvanise their design knowledge, creative actions and career plans.

Excellent Student Satisfaction and Employment Levels

Students of the MA Interior Architecture and Design programme have reported ‘Excellent’ module appraisals for the seventh year in a row.

They have also achieved an impressive 90% employment rate. These Alumni have let us know that they have secured industry roles as architects, interior designers, business managers and educators.

Emerald Herrick Doyle

Notably, this year, two of the international postgraduates have secured interior design roles at the award winning and world leading company X-Living.

These two talented designers are currently working in Shanghai with the renown Li Xiang (Frame Magazine’s Designer of the Year in 2018). These designers extending our supportive network of Alumni which includes Li Xiang, as she herself is a former graduate the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design. Equally, we are proud to announce that two of our Alumni, have now been awarded their Doctoral Degrees (PhD), Dr Huichao Feng producing a study focusing on the vernacular architecture associated with the matriarchal Mosou community and TEDx speaker; Dr Tamadher Al Fahal, has conducted innovative curatorial research relating to philosophical approaches in contemporary Islamic Design Studies. Over the last five years Tam and Huichao have worked as a Studio Assistants and have been employed by BCU to mentor our student colleagues.

This mentoring has positively influenced the decision of two more recent Alumni; Ana de Areia Soares and Yifeng Liao, to enter the world of academia. Both are preparing to begin their own novel Doctoral Studies.

Live Project 1 – ‘IA Vegan Ways’ a creative cookery school for Intervention Architecture.

Engagement with well-being & creative industry-based scenarios was a key aspect of this module. Working collaboratively with the award-winning architect Anna Parker, this progressive transdisciplinary design assignment, engaged our students with new thinking about the ‘experience economy’. Students focused on how immersive ‘UX’ user experiences can be choreographed as soft space interventions within architectural settings. By justifying their ‘IA Vegan Ways’ Cookery School concepts for the Birmingham based studio Intervention Architecture, students had to reveal the connections between their research and the sensorial Experiential Design that they were proposing. These concepts being presented to the client in the context of a professional studio critique.

Live Project 2 – A Diwali MELA Festival Stand to celebrate the ‘Festival of Light’ for ‘Art at the Heart’ CIC’.

This year the Co.LAB Module focused on the blurred boundary between art and design. Our students were asked to create an imaginative Mela Festival Stand. These concepts being created for Mukesh and Kamaljit Kumar, the Directors of the not for profit organisation; ‘Art at the Heart’ (a community interest company). In this ‘community meets art’ project, our students were challenged to refine a culture-scape, to reflect the values and principles of the ‘Art at the Heart’ organisation, whilst considering how these interior schemes could be Semiotically encoded, to poetically embody ‘Diwali’ stories, customs and practices. By Designing Together, student teams were challenged to create short animated films about their creative process and their design proposal, which they professionally pitched to the Client at a Pecha Kucha event.

Huiling Zhang

Xiaomin Chen

Zena Ouyang

Final ‘Signature Projects’ - 2019-2020

In the final trimester of the course, the students engage in the formation of persuasive and graphically ingenious self-directed ‘Signature Projects’ that capture and convey their individual design processes, creativity and astute insights that academically, professionally and creatively test their particular Design Hypothesis. The production of a distinctive and creative ‘Practice Portfolio’ has allowed them to showcase their unique design talents and the influence that this has had on others, shifting the perceived boundaries of the interior design profession towards new horizons

Huan Liao

Alexis Beech

Huan Liao

Huiling Zhang

Jinghan Yu