MICHAEL MOLLOY: The course at QUT Interior Design is strongly related to industry. Our students are involved in real projects for real clients and deal with real issues.

JILL FRANZ: One of our major aims is to ensure that the knowledge that is produced doesn’t just stay on the shelf in the library, but in actual fact goes out and impacts on everyday interior design practice.

ALICE NORTON: We came together as a group of six.

HANYA LEO: We worked with how we could potentially make this clothes peg into a furniture piece.

ALICE NORTON: So we looked at taking a different take on it and up scaling it to activate spaces, such as laneways, that attach onto bollards and light poles.

CLAIRE FLEGO: Once they’re clamped on they act as benches or as seats so you can sit down and also have a drink off one.

ALICE NORTON: That took us through stages of sketching, designing, testing, re-designing, developing that design and ultimately being taught skills that got us to a final product.

STEPHEN MCCLENAHAN: We had to just use all our different processes to create this form. So, welding, bending, grinding, cutting, it was all a process that came together for this final product.

ALICE NORTON: So firstly we won a Brisbane laneway award, which then followed through to the Queensland furniture awards, where we also won. That then took us to Melbourne, where we also won the Australian furniture of the year awards for the student category.

ANGELA LAYTON: My name is Angela Layton and I studied at QUT graduating with an interior design degree. For the last eight years I’ve been an associate with an architectural practice in Brisbane called Arkhefield Architects. We designed and built this development, River Key at Southbank, as well as the fit out here at Stokehouse. Clearly without having studied interior design I wouldn’t be able to practice as an interior designer, but beyond that I think that it taught me from the very beginning how to think differently and how to re-interpret viewing the world and looking at the world and how we can actually alter the spaces that we inhabit.

HANYA LEO: QUT really offers a hands-on course that really prepares you for the future and working with industry professionals.

STEPHEN MCCLENAHAN: You’ve got to take something from a sketch design, from an idea in our head, to something that is actually pretty much marketable now. We’re out there talking to clients, talking to producers, talking to manufacturers, people that actually want what we’ve got. And QUT has enabled us to do this.