Interior Design Year One

Babel. noun. derived from the Hebrew word Babel (βαβὲλ), meaning “confusion.”

The first year supports a foundational approach to the study of the interior providing a structure to experiment and explore creative ideas through different cultural themes. Students are then invited to examine and develop these ideas in response to the fundamental elements and principles of the interior. These have been developed into three key focus areas: Identities, Proximities, and Inhabitation with each issue being explored through a sequence of related projects.

Embracing the atomised ‘remote’ and confusion of current times, the overarching theme for this year’s studio work is Babel. With biblical, fictional and even computational instances, the many tales of Babel remain current and particularly relevant. The task is to enquiry through the lens of the interior its many aspects: questions of language, gender, power, labour, inclusiveness, totality, sustainability, human greed, doomed spaces, etc.

The site for these interior explorations is The Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining (1980).

In a ‘Borges meets Kubrick’ fashion the sequence of projects so far started with Babel’s Portal (Identities) and moving into ‘A Babelian’s Refuge’ (Proximities). The only definite rule: hexagons are to be avoided.

Tutors: Tania Lopez Winkler (Leader), Reiko Yamazaki, Ella Doran and Luke Jones

Visiting Critics and Speakers: Ben Kelly, Peter Higgins, Katherine Skellon, Natalie Badenduck, Kevin Brennan, Jim Eyre & Natalie Christensen, and Boryana Ilieava.