Interior Architecture Year 1

ARCHIVE

Tutors: Liz Ellston (Year Lead), Nahed Chakouf, Inan Gokcek, Jo Hagan & Jo Meehan

Liz Ellston is an architect, lecturer and environmental communicator with a fascination for psychology of architecture and the interior, people: place, process: pattern. Liz’s experience from 20 years in design practice feeds into her pedagogy, encouraging various ways of learning.

Nahed Chakouf is the founder of London-based architectural studio NJ Architecture. Nahed holds a PhD in Architectural Design from The Bartlett, UCL.

Inan Gokcek is an interior and architectural designer running Studio Anares. He collects cultural artefacts which he upcycles for various design projects.

Jo Hagan is an architect and principal of USE Architecture, a design studio driven by the fine line between pragmatism and pretension. He has taught for 30 years and supplants this with a passionate engagement with contemporary culture.

Jo Meehan is an associate of MAS Architecture studio, working on a range of public housing refurbishment projects and small scale sustainable interventions.

Design Fundamentals & Strategies for Interior Architecture

In first year students on the BA Interior Architecture course are introduced to underlying concepts and principles associated with the discipline and learn fundamental processes, skills and techniques relevant to conceive, develop, resolve and communicate spatial design proposals. In the first semester students are set a range of assignments and shor t projects, such as: 2D representations to convey information using collage and timelines; a bread construct to investigate qualities of light and drawing conventions; and a group precedent study to understand intent and architectural representation. Building on these skills they are then asked to design their first piece of interior architecture.

This year, they were challenged to address different types of Makers and their working/living spaces. The first was to design a transformable piece of Makertecture (a combination of architecture and furniture) for a specified maker to inhabit and use as a stand alone spatial environment. Their location was the Museum of the Home in East London, where makers could demonstrate their work to the public in an interior setting related to domestic scale.

In the second semester, students individually re-ordered the interiors of Hansard Mews properties for a critically relevant programme of specialised repair, repurposing, modification and upcycling of ‘stuff, waste, existing buildings and lifestyles’.

Inspired by their visit to the Design Museum exhibition, ‘Waste Age: What can design do?’ and the Shepherds Bush location, burdened by consumer waste but strong in community potential, this fuelled students’ site and context investigations. While developing an understanding of re- making and reuse practices and ecological design, they iteratively investigated materials and techniques with an equally utopian eye.

Archive of Interior Architecture’s work from previous years:

Interior Architecture Year 1 2020-2021