MA in Interior Design

Online event for prospective students

To provide prospective students with opportunities to find out about the RCA experience and programmes we run a number of on-campus and online open days as well as events in various countries around the world. You can find out about upcoming events or watch replays of past open days on the RCA website.

The MA Interior Design Programme engages you in exploring emergent ideas and issues concerning distinct aspects of the design of the interior. This incorporates research, practice and making work that explores the diversity of human occupation in numerous environments, extending from the room to the city. The programme encourages the view that the interior is an interface between its occupants and the built environment, and it supports the notion that the interior is an agent for social change.

The programme values speculation, analysis and rigour with regard to the thinking and making of all aspects of the design of interior environments. It challenges you to formulate your own rigorous and critically independent responses to these fundamental concerns. This is often undertaken via the reworking of existing structures, the creation of temporal installations and the formation of permanent interventions. All of these practices involve the construction and communication of particular spatial identities using space, objects and materials.

Programme structure

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College-wide units.

Term 1

You'll take an initial Primer unit, which will engage you in the exploration and synthesis of the principles and methods of critical ideas in interior space. It introduces you to ideas and the processes that will enable participants to synthesise thinking and research in the design of interior spaces. The work in this unit will be based on a focused exploration that affords you the possibility to challenge your thinking through research, design, and exploration in order to generate new meanings for buildings, objects, spaces and the elements within them.

You will also participate in Media Studies. The unit aims to increase your critical engagement with media and space. Through this unit, you will be supported to increase your cross-disciplinary communication and you will be challenged to expand your media practice beyond architecture’s reliance on media as pure representation.

Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in the College-wide unit AcrossRCA; see below for more details.

You'll also take an Elective unit.

Term 2

The Platforms unit engages you in the origination and development of your own project in relation to the thematic concerns of the programme platforms. Each platform in this unit is designed to emphasise a particular way of thinking or aspect of the design of the interior.

Platform themes are the provocations or generators of ideas that you will utilise in the development of your own research and projects. It is anticipated that you will use the platform's interests to assist in the determination of your own practice interests and ultimately your professional identities.

In term 2 all School of Architecture students be offered a School-wide Elective unit.

Term 3

The purpose of the Independent Research Project (IRP) is to enable you to apply the intellectual, technical and professional skills that you have developed throughout the programme to a challenging self-set brief. The project you are undertaking is one that is normally informed and advanced from the work previously undertaken in the previous platform unit.

Still working within the thematic concerns of the platforms, you are expected to have agreed on a research and project proposal, a brief, with your tutor that identifies the parameters of your project, including its aims, rationale, approaches and methodologies and possible resource implications.

AcrossRCA

Situated at the core of your RCA student experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide AcrossRCA unit supports how you respond to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds by engaging you in a global creative network that draws on expertise within and beyond the institution. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for you to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts.

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations from internationally acclaimed speakers that will encourage you to think beyond the discourses of art, architecture, communication, and design, and extend into other territories such as economics, ethics, science, engineering, medicine or astrophysics.

In interdisciplinary teams you will be challenged to use your intellect and imagination to respond to urgent contemporary themes, providing you with an opportunity to develop innovative and disruptive thinking, critically reflect on your responsibilities as a creative practitioner and demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world. This engagement with interdisciplinary perspectives and practices is designed both to complement your disciplinary studies and provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.

What you need to know before you apply

Candidates are selected entirely on merit and applications are welcomed from all over the world. The selection process will consider creativity, imagination and innovation as demonstrated in your portfolio and video, as well as your potential to benefit from the programme and to achieve high MA standards overall.

You will usually have a good undergraduate degree or other appropriate experience. Professional experience, either before during or after a first degree, may be a benefit. We welcome applications from candidates from other related backgrounds, such as architecture, furniture design, product design and graphic design.

For full entry requirements, key dates and the application process visit the RCA website.

Fees for new students

Visit the RCA website for tuition fees and for information on scholarships and funding opportunities.

Meet the RCA

We host a range on online and on-campus open days as well as recruitment event in cities around the world. These events can include 1-to-1 meets and portfolio advice, informal chats, presentations and sessions with staff, students and alumni.

Check the Check the RCA event webpage for details of upcoming events.

Programme structure

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College-wide units.

Term 1

You'll take an initial Primer unit, which will engage you in the exploration and synthesis of the principles and methods of critical ideas in interior space. It introduces you to ideas and the processes that will enable participants to synthesise thinking and research in the design of interior spaces. The work in this unit will be based on a focused exploration that affords you the possibility to challenge your thinking through research, design, and exploration in order to generate new meanings for buildings, objects, spaces and the elements within them.

You will also participate in Media Studies. The unit aims to increase your critical engagement with media and space. Through this unit, you will be supported to increase your cross-disciplinary communication and you will be challenged to expand your media practice beyond architecture’s reliance on media as pure representation.

Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in the College-wide unit AcrossRCA; see below for more details.

You'll also take an Elective unit.

Term 2

The Platforms unit engages you in the origination and development of your own project in relation to the thematic concerns of the programme platforms. Each platform in this unit is designed to emphasise a particular way of thinking or aspect of the design of the interior.

Platform themes are the provocations or generators of ideas that you will utilise in the development of your own research and projects. It is anticipated that you will use the platform's interests to assist in the determination of your own practice interests and ultimately your professional identities.

In term 2 all School of Architecture students be offered a School-wide Elective unit.

Term 3

The purpose of the Independent Research Project (IRP) is to enable you to apply the intellectual, technical and professional skills that you have developed throughout the programme to a challenging self-set brief. The project you are undertaking is one that is normally informed and advanced from the work previously undertaken in the previous platform unit.

Still working within the thematic concerns of the platforms, you are expected to have agreed on a research and project proposal, a brief, with your tutor that identifies the parameters of your project, including its aims, rationale, approaches and methodologies and possible resource implications.

The Royal College of Art has been ranked the number 1 university for art & design internationally for the 9th consecutive year, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023 – the largest world-wide survey of academic and industry opinion.