5. Interior Matter

This platform is laser focused on materials and making within interiors. Materials driven design techniques are used to explore the performance, pragmatic and perceptive qualities of matter, and how these qualities inform aspects of form, detail and atmosphere.

Materials offer some of the greatest opportunities for creativity and innovation within interior design, and a deep understanding of materials and technology is one of the vehicles that allows us to deliver those elusive characteristics.

As designers we’re way past the perfunctory task of providing shelter. From the technological mastery displayed in Apple stores to the health promoting nature of Maggie’s Centers, the spaces we create should deliver so much more. They should tell stories, communicate values, be legible and allow the occupants within to flourish. Our spaces must also perform the functions for which they were intended. And it is through the use and manipulation of matter that our design intent will be ultimately manifested.

This year students developed an individual brief focussed on community. Their thesis projects explored themes such as celebrating destruction, water scarcity, unifying past and present, communal dining, and reuse and repair.

Ian Hunter