Programme Director: Dr Jerome Tsui

A biomimetic installation that mimics the effects of natural form on one’s innate senses, an in-between space under a mutating pattern of chemigram on repeat, an illuminated visual journey that plays with the materiality and emotional qualities of colour, an atmospheric light enclosure with distinct interior experience corresponding to the time of day – these are a few of the projects designed by our first year students in the Spatial and Interior Programme.  Using design as a tool to bring and raise awareness to the importance of mental health in a post pandemic context, they were asked to create a site-specific installation for their final narrative project to challenge our experience of the world through the eyes of others.  These projects aspire to bring an empathic response to the well-being and social challenges of our time.

After initial experimentation and the design of a small art studio using railway containers, they collaborated with graphic design students to co-create and examine interdisciplinary approaches to the design process.  Informed by design research, students put forward their own proposals based on case studies, individual narratives, personal interests and other creative obsessions.  They explored how design is a form of storytelling through the analysis and investigation of narrative environments.  From Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural exhibition at the Barbican to conversation with Theatre Designer Tom Paris on his costume and set design for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, students navigated between design fictions and detail model making to arrive at projects that reveal rich narratives in imaginative spaces.

From inducing warmth and safety to defining the criteria for one’s physical, emotional and mental well-being, as spatial and interior designers, they observed the interaction between people and space to discover and interpret the joys and challenges of modern life.