Postgraduate in Interior Space Design. Private Perimeters

The Postgraduate in Interior Space Design. Private Perimeters focuses on giving character and meaning to domestic spaces. The course is designed to be practical, but without neglecting good results in the theoretical realm and a degree of project definition sufficient to ensure successful execution.

This programme aims to provide professionals and students from this field of interior design with an understanding of how new conditions of health and wellbeing, environment, economics, society, culture and use affect domestic interior spaces.

Through active and proven methodologies, the Postgraduate in Interior Space Design. Private Perimeters prepares students to successfully tackle the challenges of the professional world.

Module 1: Criteria

In this module, we work on the most reflexive and conceptual aspects of an interior design project, as well as its design and building process.

1. Theoretical reflection
   • Historical context
   • Current context (trends)
      
2. Design and building process
   • The design process of an interior design studio
   • Building process
   • Visions (agents involved in or close to design from their experience)
      
3.  Conferences (Presentations by interior designers, architects, designers and other professionals who have specialised in domestic interior design).
    

Module 2: Means

In this module we work on the means that are necessary to define a project, installations with lighting as the main material, materials and products, and colour, with a clear focus on private space.

1. Installations. Comfort and sustainability
   • General implementation of installations
   • Sustainability and energy efficiency criteria
   • Sanitation
   • Ventilation and gas
   • Plumbing
   • Renewable energies
   • Thermal installations
   • Electricity
   • Domotics and telecommunications
   • Lighting
      
2.  Materials and furniture
   • Criteria for choosing materials
   • Materials and products
   • New materials. Research
   • Furniture
      
3.  Colour and texture
   • Colour and user
   • Chromatic language
   • Colour and matter
      

Module 3: Workshops

In this module, different interior living spaces will be developed conceptually and experimentally.

1. Workshop: Kitchen Space
2. Workshop: Bathroom Space
3. Creative workshop
    

Module 4: Final postgraduate project

The final postgraduate project consists of developing a domestic interior design project at executive level. The project is based on a real space, an existing home or building, with a defined user and specific needs and characteristics.

Students should have a free-thinking attitude, especially when making decisions, so they can generate powerful and highly innovative ideas and proposals, with empathy and emotions being reflected in the results.

Furthermore, the Project tutors' attitude is receptive to the students' sensitivity in order to accompany them in the design process and teach them to manage their vital and cultural baggage, without predeterminations. Perseverance, curiosity, motivation and necessary risk-taking are decisive factors to provide added value and avoid homogenisation.

It is in this spirit that the project is completed with support from specialised professionals, who act as consultants. Throughout this time we have tackled various interior design projects with very different themes. For more than 10 years we have successfully succeeded in inspiring students to transform their knowledge and skills into creative ideas, obtaining a wide variety of results that reflect each student's expression.

Most of these projects have met the challenge of being easily constructed, if at all, thanks to the high level of detail achieved. This objective, which was set by the postgraduate management from day one, is the greatest compliment the course receives year after year.

Special attention is paid to the project theme selection and to the client's varied profiles. In previous courses, the buildings chosen often present a singularity, such as a flat in Antoni Gaudí's "La Pedrera", a penthouse in the French Institute by José A. Coderch or a flat in the Torre Colón skyscraper in Barcelona.

Other examples of projects that were carried out in recent years include: a modernist house in the Gracia district; a prefabricated house based on a modular system; a ground floor flat in the Eixample district, a fishermen's house in the Maresme, a warehouse in the old industrial district of Poblenou (Palo Alto) converted into loft flats, a flat in the Torre Colón building, a 17th century Catalan country house, transformation of under-roof space in the Eixample district, transformation of a hotel into collective housing, duplex in a new wooden structure building....
 

• Insist on the importance of conceptual thinking when generating space, which provides argumentative solidity to the design proposals, considering the aesthetic and cultural context.
• Emphasise how useful it is to exhaustively develop the project and its follow-up in order to guarantee a final result that is consistent with the initial proposals.
• Stress the growing importance of technology in a more sustainable and inclusive society, which poses new demands and usage perspectives that modify traditional practices.
• The programme offers specialised and up-to-date theoretical and practical knowledge to professionals who focus a large part of their activity on designing interior living spaces in all their varieties.

• Promote critical thinking and interpret historical and current references.
• Acknowledge the importance of project rigour in the design and construction process.
• Encourage criteria for choosing materials and furniture consistent with interior design.
• Acquire criteria for the general implementation of lighting systems and installations, with a view to sustainability.
• Use materials, resources and/or technologies in interior design responsibly, safely and efficiently.
• Integrate cultural and technological references in projects and workshops with an innovative and creative approach.
• Elaborate a coherent interior design project and respond to previous conditioning factors ( functional, in terms of the promoter's and/or user's identity, economic, constructive, social, environmental, etc.).
• Ability to represent and communicate projects and architectural thinking.
   

Recommended admission profile

Interior Designers, Architects and Technical Architects, Engineers, Graduates in Fine Arts with mastery of three-dimensional design programmes, professional or academic profiles with accredited experience in the different fields of study.

Access and admission requirements

This degree requires, as a prerequisite, an official university degree (graduate, engineer, architect, diploma, technical engineer, technical architect) or equivalent (university’s own degree with a minimum of 180 credits) or another degree issued by a higher education institution of the European Higher Education Area that enables access to a master's degree in the country where the degree was issued.