Bachelor of Design (Interior Design)

Overview

• Learn to create tailored environments - custom design furniture, lighting, walls, partitions, flooring, colour, fabrics and graphics.
• Prepares you to consider purpose, efficiency, comfort, safety and aesthetics of interior spaces, integrating creative solutions.
• Conceptualise and develop your designs using models, full-scale material constructs and digital animations.
• Graduates work in multi-disciplinary firms in the design and construction industries, retail, theatre and exhibition design, interaction design, gaming and virtual environments.

Details

Interior design is concerned with the relations between people and the environment through aesthetically meaningful interior environments. As such they are functional, enhance the quality of life and culture of the occupants, and are aesthetically attractive. Interior designers consider the purpose, efficiency, comfort, safety and aesthetics of interior spaces to arrive at an optimum design, integrating creative and technical solutions. They custom design or specify furniture, lighting, walls, partitions, flooring, colour, fabrics and graphics to produce an environment tailored to a purpose.

As well as technical knowledge, interior designers possess theoretical knowledge of how people interact with environments psychologically and socially. They often work as part of a team that may include architects, builders, project managers, engineering consultants, shopfitters, cabinet makers, furniture suppliers and materials suppliers.

Why choose this course?

This internationally recognised course integrates design with social and environmental issues. Links with QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty facilitate digital design, virtual and interactive environments and provide broader career opportunities.

Interior design at QUT has strong connection to local industry, employing award-winning practitioners as tutors, and promoting student work in prominent public settings. The degree prepares students for a career in an increasingly diverse field that embraces small and large scale design in both real and virtual environments.

Recent focus on physical and digital experimentation and attention to body/space relations is driving the course into the third millennium. Developed from traditional foundations, our approach extends interior design into new and emergent fields that demand the spatial thinking of interior designers.

This vision is supported by a new understanding of teaching, culminating in upper-level design studios that are the site for experimentation and research-led enquiry. Here students conceptualise and develop their designs through to detailed resolution, using representational means ranging from models to full-scale material constructs and digital animations. As an important location for self-discovery, these project-based design units engage staff expertise offering different and individual specialist approaches.

Career outcomes

Many interior designers work independently or in both small and large practices. Others elect to work in multidisciplinary firms specialising in large-scale complex architectural projects, both locally and internationally. Other career areas include retail, theatre and exhibition design, particularly gallery or museum settings. Exciting new areas include interaction design, gaming and virtual environments—specialist areas requiring high visualisation skills.

Professional recognition

Graduates qualify for membership of the Design Institute of Australia. The course is an educational member of the Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators’ Association of Australia and New Zealand.

Units

Your course

Year 1

The foundation year includes a diverse range of subjects in order to expose the breadth of design process and theory. Five common units cover design, design history, design and sustainability and digital communication. There are three units specific to the discipline, two concerned with core interior design studios and the other dealing with design technology.

Year 2

You complete two design studios exploring issues of inhabitation in both transitory and permanent residential situations, and discuss these relative to theory and practice of leading designers. This is supported by two units that advance understanding of interior systems and technology, alongside further topics in colour and the environment that engage issues of aesthetic and psychological perceptions of space. There is opportunity to commence second major or first minor units.

Year 3

This year departs from previous years to take a more experimental attitude to design studios. A range of topics allow you to discover differing approaches to the interior. Alongside these studios are lecture-based units addressing interior theory and environments in transition, raising issues such as gendered spaces, interiority and globalisation. A collaborative unit with other design students facilitates interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary studies. You complete two second major or minor units.

Year 4

Two semi-structured research-led design studios allow you to develop a body of work that distinguishes and advances your own design interests. Supporting this area of study are two common design units in design research and professional practice, providing a context for design practice. A further four units of second major or four units of a second minor can also be taken in this year.

Second majors and minors

You will be able to select from two 4 unit approved minors or one 8 unit approved second major to enhance and broaden your knowledge in a related field or area of interest.

Interior Design Second Major and Minor Options

Second Major:

A 2nd major from anywhere in QUT.

Minors:

A minor from anywhere in QUT.
*Please remember that one minor must be from outside of your course.
**Design students interested in enrolling in the BEE Applications minor, must first consult and obtain approval from the Subject Area Coordinator/Course Coordinator

Entry requirements

Minimum academic requirements

Did you complete secondary school in Australia?

Course fees

Your actual fees may vary depending on which units you choose. All fees are based on current fixed fee prices. We review fees annually.

Scholarships and financial support

You can apply for scholarships to help you with study and living costs.

These scholarships are available for this course:

View all scholarships