module specification

This Major Project module enables Interior Design students to prepare for independent practice in the workplace or to progress onto higher studies. It is the opportunity to synthesise your specialist knowledge and skills and effectively communicate these. In this module, you will carry out the project conceived and developed in the parallel Project Design and Development module (DN6001), fully realising it in appropriate form by the end of the module.

You will exercise and display your abilities in selecting, analysing and applying knowledge, skills and understanding to a negotiated and fully researched project in order to properly understand your strengths, interests and position in your field, and the potential for your future professional development.

You will show that you understand the complex and changing nature of problems in the professional discipline of Interior Design and can devise and apply realistic strategies for constructing, applying and managing a process designed to provide solutions.

A professional standard of realisation, contextualisation and presentation will be expected, providing the elements for a portfolio of practice with which you may enter the field of employment or self-employment or further studies.

Pass & Completion of Prior Level

This module seeks to enable you to:

• Devise a fully holistic process to realise the outcomes of an Interior Design research and development project
• Achieve outcomes of a professional standard of realisation and presentation
• Contextualise and present your outcomes to a professional standard, showing that you have understood and managed complex and ambitious tasks
• Work independently, self-reflectively and with concern for the ethical issues and principles attached to your project showing your understanding of your particular strengths, interests and position in your field, and your potential for further development

Through a negotiated and agreed individual project, you will gain experience of:

• Planning, recording, managing and conducting a process for the production and completion of a researched proposal
• Aligning skills and knowledge in various areas of expertise and endeavour – technical, intellectual, creative, organisational, critical and interpersonal – to the successful conclusion of an integrated project
• Liaison with industry figures in the pursuit of the project
• Professional expectations of styles and quality of presentation
• Critically assessing your own work against standards expected in your field

Projects will seek to enable a range of learning opportunities such as;

• Formative feedback from industry specialist staff
• Professional mentoring
• Self directed and managed study and practice
• Critique and creative feedback from peers
• Online forums to share progress and support
• Acquisition and deployment of higher level skills in practice

At the end of the module, you will be able to:

1. Transform and realise the outcomes of a design research and development project into a holistic plan for the production of the practice intended
2. Work independently, managing complex problems and tasks, critically analyzing your own work and defending it including in the context of ethical issues arising
3. Show your work in a fully contextualized way and to a professional standard, explaining or illustrating your position in your field, your strengths and interests and how you can continue to develop your professional capacity
4. Develop project work that demonstrates your strategic and specific judgement in material, environmental and spatial decisions and the relationship of components, interior configuration and the street
5. Achieve professional standards of project management, realization and communication as appropriate and expected in the discipline of Interior Design

At regular critiques or tutorials, students are expected to produce a coherent account of their project progress, together with critical evaluation of successes and failures to date. Formative feedback will be given in response to the project plan. The final mark is given at the end of the module, following assessment of a comprehensive portfolio of all relevant developmental and presentation work and the final outcome itself.

All students are required to undertake formal interim presentations with evidence of continuous reflective journals responding to studio critique and tutorial guidance. Work presented will be subject to formal studio feedback from a panel of disciplinary specialists. This will inform final assessment marks and must be considered and acted upon by the student.

Work must be carefully organized and presented to indicate the development of work and the content clearly labeled. Students are required to attend timetabled studio and workshop sessions.

Boyle, G. (2003) Design Project Management, Ashgate Publishing.
Cooper, R. and Press, M (1994) The Design Agenda, Wiley.

Additional texts and other reference materials will be identified by studio tutors annually in support of the
specific studio theme.