module specification

Materiality, form and structure, colour and light, surface and texture affects meaning and value in all design. This module requires your critical evaluation of subtle and implicit design details, resulting in sustainable and environmental design proposals expressed through materials and construction, considering how material selection and manipulation provides the interior space or the artefact with qualities and values expressed as the spatial experience.

You will explore and experiment with both physical and virtual material representation, drawing on concepts and ideas originally generated within the studio. Outcomes will be developed through material and/ or constructional experimentation including scaled interventions or working models. Through in-depth practice-led research, you will consider the sustainable, social, functional and environmental impacts of material choices and the performance of these upon designed-spaces or objects. You will realise relevant design solutions for studio briefs, in response to specific users and/or sites.

You will work towards a professional standard of presentation, developing a logical and creative approach to design problem solving, appropriate to the needs of users and clients. You will build upon your employability skills, understanding the relevance of your project work within the various industry sectors and work towards confidently presenting your project proposal.

Pre-requisite: DN4019 Spatial Design

Through studio projects, you will normally develop knowledge and experience of:

• research methods and recording;
• material research;
• light analysis and its relevance in the project proposal;
• reflective commentary and annotation presenting clarification and interpretation of concepts and proposals;
• environmental material issues, sustainability and social impact;
• construction methods and practices;
• technical conventions of construction and detail drawing appropriate to industry standards;
• scaled modelling, 2D and 3D production techniques and technologies;
• making and modelling appropriate to the approach of interior architecture and design, interior design or interior decoration;
• scaled drawings and systems appropriate to the approach of interior architecture and design, interior design or interior decoration;
• a self-produced portfolio representing your project;
• understanding industry positioning through self-reflection.

Scheduled teaching provides the guidance and foundation to ensure that independent study is effective in addressing the module’s learning outcomes and assessment tasks.

In-class activity makes use of varied student-centred approaches such as active, flipped and blended learning, so that a range of learning strategies is deployed, and individual learning styles are accommodated. Information is provided through a range of means and sources to minimise and remove barriers to successful progress through the module. The course team seeks to embed the University’s Education for Social Justice Framework in fostering learning that is enjoyable, accessible, relevant and that takes account of the social and cultural context and capital of its students.

Activities foster peer-to-peer community building and support for learning. Reflective learning is promoted through interim formative feedback points that ask students to reflect on their progress, receive help where they identify the opportunity for improvement in learning strategies and outcomes and make recommendations to themselves for future development. Throughout the module, students build a body of work, including written reflections on progress and achievement.

The School’s programme of employability events and embedded work-based learning within the curriculum supports students’ personal and career development planning. Through these initiatives, students are increasingly able, as they progress from year to year, to understand the professional environment of their disciplines, the various opportunities available to them, and how to shape their learning according to their ambitions.

On successful completion of the module, to the standard expected at Level 5, you will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

1. research and make thorough and considered material and light, construction or process choices for a range of interior design contexts, defending those choices;

Cognitive Intellectual Abilities

2. consider, balance and reflect on the complex and competing demands made by the sustainable, practical, environmental, economic and aesthetic issues linked to material, construction or process selection;

Subject Specific Practical Skills

3. accurately express design intentions in respect of materials through a range of industry standard professional realisation and communication techniques and through making artefacts, samples, mock-ups and models, those techniques informed by users, clients and context;

4. use and apply to a professional standard, appropriate detailed and scaled techniques and technical competences presenting material, interior  and construction details and proposals that fulfil the requirements for Interior Architecture, Interior Design or Interior Decoration as appropriate to your course.

In the end of project reviews, you are expected to produce a coherent presentation, demonstrating your project development, process and findings, together with an individual critical evaluation of relative successes and failures, and to be able communicate and debate these with others.

Project work will be formatively assessed and reflected upon in feedback throughout, including continuing independent practice and associated health and safety procedures. All students are required to undertake interim presentations responding to studio feedback and tutorial guidance.

The final mark is given at the end of the module, demonstrated through a portfolio of project work. Precise requirements for submission will be given in project briefs. Work must be carefully organised and presented to indicate the development of work and the content clearly labelled.

You must attend and engage with all timetabled studio and workshop sessions and tasks set both in-class and as self-study.

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