The Environment and Interior programme structures a range of discipline specific courses including history and technology, with courses from other disciplines from the School of Design and PolyU General University courses. As part of our discipline specific courses the programme offers a series of electives that provide learning choices for students. These electives include: Eastern Study Trip; Western Study Trip; Furniture Design; Landscape Design; Urban Design; Re-used Spaces; Interactive Spaces; 1 to 1 prototyping; Advanced Model Making and Advanced Drawing.
Extra-Curricular Activities and Events
The Environment and Interior organizes a range of different activities ranging from: a Lecture series; to Advanced Colloquia on critical and relevant topics; to discipline specific exhibitions of student work. This is complemented by other events, exhibitions and activities in the School of Design.
Facilities and support
Within the school students have access to studio spaces; computer laboratories; material and making workshops; and; photographic and video studios that are beneficial for design education and nurturing of crafting and design skills. Students are actively encouraged to use research resources within the School and within the University’s academic and material resources as an integral part of their design education.
Aims and objectives
The BA (Hons) in Environment and Interior Design, a 2-year full time studio oriented programme, is one of the key design disciplines in the School of Design. Innovative, explorative and inventive, the programme guides students’ creative development in the manipulation and mastery of spatial design as a structured progression throughout the four year programme.
Core issues the Environment and Interior programme addresses include focus on the interior aspects of the city, how interiority has become the operative agent for setting trends, as social facilitators and a forms of speculative and spatial questions, especially in the dense environment of Hong Kong, and how interior architecture/design professions have acritical role to play in the definition of this emerging spatial condition.
The Environment and Interior programme prepares students’ entry to the Interior architect / design and related professions and aims to develop students to become effective spatial designers and future innovators in their profession. Graduates gain knowledge of how interior design intersects with other spatial and environmental disciplines including architecture, landscape and urban design, and provides a gateway to further educational opportunities in design fields.
Characteristics
Spatial Design Education
The Environment and Interior programme links academic work with design as design thinking and design processes focusing on:
Design praxis, thinking through doing, exploring, questioning and the spatial and material embodiment of design.
Concept development and the incorporation of theories and research as foundational thinking for design idea development.
Emphasising critical design issues and concepts as well as design research, processes, methods and professional skills in spatial problem-solving including: conceptual idea generation, site and context understanding, investigation of socio-cultural issues, exploration of needs and requirements, development of spatial and tectonic skills, and integration of technical and material knowledge needed for the material embodiment of design.
Studio culture
The Environment and Interior Design programme is a studio focused learning context for design explorations and spatial experimentations:
A context where thinking, design dialogue and doing fuses together.
A place of shared intellectual resources.
A place of shared capacities between students and instructors.
A place of crafting, making, exploring involving hands-on spatial manipulation and material manifestation on all scales.
Is Environment & Interior Design for you?
You have a passion for spatial design and a strong belief in the power of architecture to influence the ways we live.
You are culturally sensitive and have a fascination with how we interact with our physical environment.
You constantly think about ways in which spatial design can improve our lives and add to the diversity and interest of the environments where we live.
You are a conceptual thinker who has a strong sense of space and place.
You have a good understanding of two dimensional and three dimensional media and can express yourself in these.
You are an independent thinker and are self-driven, but are also able to work with others in a team; you can be flexible, adaptable and can communicate your ideas well in English.
Programme structure
Year 3 – Critical Urban Topographies: the definition of the territory and the city, through its interiors
Critical Urban Topographies, the theme for the 3rd year addresses aspects of complexity of the city and its processes of ‘interiorisation’. As framework, the studio operates on the premise that Hong Kong’s urban and territorial transformation occurs primarily through the interior. As design studio the focus is directed at urban extremes of harnessing spatial types, processes, actors and the possible lamination of these into a number of spatial types.
Within the 4-year curricula, the 3rd is seen as a critical junction between the 2nd year’s Cultural Hybrid Studio and the Open Studio of the 4th year. The 3rd year curricula focuses on foundational knowledge within the realms of architectural tectonics, services, spatial design and the supportive technologies within the first semester, with the second semester dedicated to critical research that allows for explorative and thematic driven design and deep investigation of associated spatial problems.
Semester 1 focuses on aquiring basic technologies and design engineering skillsets. Semester 2 explores how design and technology merge as spatial propositions.
Year 4 – Cooperative Studio
Coop Studio is a semester one studio project working with real clients and multi-discipline teams on real projects. Students learn to understand client briefs, real issues and client needs and work with tutors and clients on the development of professional projects.
These are presented to clients and other stakeholders and can result in realised commissions by clients. Students also learn to work in a team and how to deal with project constraints as well as design stages of concept / ideation, schematic development, detail development and if necessary budgeting and specification.
Open Studio
Year four is a year-long thesis based, explorative studio. Structured in three parts, in the fall semester, design research is used to identify and underpin critical and conceptual issues that are developed into final two stage design projects during the spring semester.
Year four students explore critical issues which have meaning for their own trajectory as a designer, engaging all aspects of research and design praxis in the articulation of their individual approaches in appropriate scales, contexts, spatial registers and material manifestations.
The reflexive design processes engage discussion throughout development and through this process, individual students identify critical positions in their projects. Outcomes maybe speculative, pragmatic, detailed or narrative: 1:1, spatially innovative, experiential, or large scale, according to the constraints and possibilities determined by the individuals.
Specific focus studies including technical, material and detail studies give in depth investigations of individual projects.
Subjects
Senior year students are required to complete a total of 63 credits in order to graduate; including 9 credits earned from General University Requirements subjects, 12 from Common Compulsory Subjects, and 42 from Discipline-Specific and Elective Subjects.
The programme structures a range of discipline specific courses including history and technology, with courses from other disciplines from the School of Design and PolyU General University courses. As part of our discipline specific courses the programme offers a series of electives that provide learning choices for students. These electives include: Eastern Study Trip; Western Study Trip; Furniture Design; Landscape Design; Urban Design; Re-used Spaces; Interactive Spaces; 1 to 1 prototyping; Advanced Model Making and Advanced Drawing.
Senior Year Curriculum
General University Requirement
9 (Credits)
Freshman Seminar
Leadership & Intra-personal Development
Service-learning
✓
Language and Communication Requirements (LCR)*
Cluster-Area Requirements (CAR)
✓
Healthy Lifestyle
Common Compulsory Subjects
12 (Credits)
Communication Basics for Designers
Visual Culture 1
Design History 1
Introduction to Design Theories and Culture
✓
Internship
✓
Cooperative Project
✓
Discipline-specific Compulsory Subjects
33 (Credits)
Visualization Skills I
Visualization Skills II
Studio I
Studio II
Studio III
Construction I
Professional Practice I : Environment & Interior Design
✓
Construction II
Studio IV
✓
Studio V
✓
Design Research Methods : Environment & Interior Design
✓
Design History II : Environment & Interior Design
✓
Professional Communication in Chinese for Design Studies
✓
Professional Practice II : Environment & Interior Design
✓
Capstone Research : Environment & Interior Design
✓
Capstone Project: Environment & Interior Design
✓
Portfolio Review
✓
Elective Subjects (Environment & Interior Design discipline-specific electives + Other elective from Environment & Interior Design or other disciplines)
6 + 3 (Credits)
Exhibition Design
Re-used Spaces
Set & Stage Design
Transport and Mobility Design
Western Study Trip
Digital & Interactive Spaces
Urban Design
1 to 1 Prototyping for Spatial Design
Eastern Study Trip
Furniture Design (Environment & Interior Design)
Landscape Design
Advanced Drawing Techniques for Spatial Design
Advanced Modeling and Material Techniques for Spatial Design
✓ Compulsory Subjects
*Senior Year Students who fail to meet the equivalent standard of the Undergraduate Degree LCR will be required to take up to 9 credits of degree LCR subjects.
Extra-Curricular Activities and Events
The Environment and Interior organises a range of different activities ranging from a Lecture series to Advanced Colloquia on critical and relevant topics; to discipline specific exhibitions of student work. This is complemented by other events, exhibitions and activities in the School of Design.
The Environment and Interior Design (EID) programme prepares students’ entry to the Interior architect / design and related professions and aims to develop students to become effective spatial designers and future innovators in their profession. Graduates gain knowledge of how interior design intersects with other spatial and environmental disciplines including architecture, landscape and urban design, and provides a gateway to further educational opportunities in design fields.
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