What if buildings could breathe, furniture could grow, and materials could heal themselves? What if the future of design wasn’t plastic or concrete—but alive? This hands-on, immersive course explores the fascinating world of bio-materials, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in sustainable design.

Students will delve into natural materials like bamboo, mycelium-based products, algae-based substances, and hempcrete—materials that not only reduce ecological footprints but also offer innovative structural and aesthetic potential. Through field visits, lab experiments, real-time material testing, and design challenges, they will explore how these materials evolve, decay, and adapt in response to different conditions.

A key component of this course is hands-on experimentation. Students will cultivate mycelium, mix and pour hempcrete, and bend bamboo to its limits. They will analyze the origins, properties, and life cycle impacts of these materials, gaining a deeper understanding of their role in environmental sustainability and innovation.

By the end of this course, students will have developed foundational knowledge of bio-materials and their applications, equipping them with the skills to rethink materiality in design. Whether creating artworks, products, or structures, students will be encouraged to use imagination to break boundaries and design for a future where nature and innovation collide.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Topics in Exhibition and Narrative Environments II follows upon INTAR-2102 and continues the exploration of the principles of exhibition from curatorial matters, experience design, narrative creation, graphic design, new media, user participation, installation, site specificity, production, etc. Topics II will conclude with the selection of a potential Thesis subject.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Exhibition and Narrative Environments

This course focuses on the hands-on process of designing and constructing exhibitions. Students will explore the key elements of exhibition design, including spatial planning, material selection, lighting, signage and way-finding. They will also be exposed to standard fabrication and printing techniques commonly used within the industry.

Working collaboratively, students will design and build exhibits, moving from concept development to the physical installation. Emphasis is placed on real-world problem-solving, project management, and understanding the technical aspects of exhibition construction.

The course will culminate in fully realized exhibits giving the students opportunities to engage the public and share their work. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00

Elective

Interior Architecture and the work of adaptive reuse pose a challenge: To understand an existing idea, concept, materiality, and context, which then becomes the starting point for architectural transformation. The origin may be ill-used or obsolete; the challenge is to knit together that which exists, with newly created form and materiality. Through a series of intertwined projects students will use multiple hand hewn modalities to draw and model proposals. This introductory studio is not designed for students with prior architectural training.

Elective

This course further develops design principles from the first semester and introduces students to methodological thinking in the relationship between context, scale and use. Real site situations are introduced and students develop individual design processes associating topological relationships between the interior and exterior, at multiple scales of interventions. Students will have the opportunity to explore design issues through both traditional and computer generated design.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This course provides students with an opportunity to study how distinct building systems are constructed to form a comprehensive whole. Through case studies, students will examine approaches to integrating a variety of systems, such as structural, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, acoustic, and communication systems. This course will focus on how interior architecture interfaces with existing buildings; the case studies will be of recent works that have altered existing building. Students will be required to use the shop and computers to execute their individual and group assignments.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Adaptive Reuse

The objective of this class is to employ digital techniques in spatial design. Students successfully completing this course should be able to develop sophisticated digital layouts with image processing software, create 2D architectural drawings and 3D models, and develop a 3D visualization of a design. In this course, we will also discuss the integration of 2D and 3D data, digital materials, as well as the basics of digital lighting and camera work.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This course explores the role of interior architecture in constructing speculative worlds. Interiors will be treated not simply as functional enclosures, but as sites of imagination, narrative, and cultural projection. Drawing from speculative design, fiction, critical fabulation, and scenography, students will develop projects that imagine alternate futures, histories, and realities through spatial design.

Alongside these conceptual explorations, the course will engage with the fundamentals of architectural drawing, projection, and making. Students will gain practical skills in analog/digital orthographic drawing, axonometric, isometric, and perspective techniques, using them not only as representational tools but also as methods of world-building and storytelling. By the end of the term, students will have produced a portfolio of speculative environments that demonstrate both technical command of architectural drawing conventions and critical engagement with the imaginative possibilities of interior space.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $100.00

Elective

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

This seminar is intended as a reinforcement of and preparation for the self-choice Design Thesis taking place the following Spring. The seminar will assist the student in becoming more aware of factors which determine a successful outcome for a design intervention within an existing building. As the first part of the three-part thesis sequence, the course serves as the building block for INTAR-2397 and the student's approved Design Thesis Feasibility Report.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Adaptive Reuse

This class introduces the student to an overview of codes and its implementation through construction details as related to the study of adaptive reuse. It will provide in depth focus on pertinent parts of local and national building codes that address issues affecting interior architecture such as egress, materials, planning, and accessibility. The student will be asked through quizzes as well as short design projects to implement these rules and regulations and to demonstrate a familiarity with the codes.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Building on the final advanced studio in the undergraduate program, the seminar engages the graduating senior with research and design studies that expand the focus of the final studio. This will involve reading, group discussions, topical studies, concept development and the crafting of an artist's statement - all in service of understanding the design intervention and its relationship to the context of its host structure. The course will culminate in a group project: the design and installation of the Senior Show as a demonstration of a design intervention within an existing structure.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Required for students in the MDes degree program. Under the supervision of their thesis advisor, students are responsible for the preparation and completion of a fully articulated design proposal of their own choice, as described by their Design Thesis Feasibility Report, submitted at the end of the Fall semester's Design Thesis Preparation class.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Required for students in the MDes degree program. Under the supervision of their thesis advisor, students are responsible for the preparation and completion of a fully articulated design proposal of their own choice, as described by their Design Thesis Feasibility Report, submitted at the end of the Fall semester's Design Thesis Preparation class.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Required for students in the MDes degree program. Under the supervision of their thesis advisor, students are responsible for the preparation and completion of a fully articulated design proposal of their own choice, as described by their Design Thesis Feasibility Report, submitted at the end of the Fall semester's Design Thesis Preparation class.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Required for students in the MDes degree program. Under the supervision of their thesis advisor, students are responsible for the preparation and completion of a fully articulated design proposal of their own choice, as described by their Design Thesis Feasibility Report, submitted at the end of the Fall semester's Design Thesis Preparation class.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies