Spatial and Interior Design

Spatial and interior design is concerned with how people experience designed environments, from the arrangement of furniture in a room to the flow of a large commercial space or the staging of a temporary installation. Whether shaping retail environments, designing experiences for festivals and events, or pioneering co-living concepts and virtual landscapes, it is a discipline that combines creative vision with technical knowledge of materials, construction and human behaviour. At the University of Kent, this three-year full-time programme prepares you to bring your spatial visions to life with confidence and skill.

You will develop your design practice through project-based work that engages with a range of scales and contexts, from intimate domestic interiors to large public and commercial spaces. You will learn to work with colour, light, texture, proportion and spatial flow, and you will develop proficiency in the technical tools of the profession, including hand drawing, physical model-making and digital design software. The programme also develops your critical and conceptual thinking, encouraging you to understand the cultural and social dimensions of designed environments and to ask what a space is for and whose experience it serves.

Graduates from spatial and interior design work in interior architecture, retail and hospitality design, exhibition design, set and production design, event and experience design, and the growing field of virtual and immersive environments. They work for design studios, architectural practices, brand agencies, retail companies, event producers and cultural institutions, as well as building independent practices. The breadth of the discipline means career paths are varied, and the skills you develop, in spatial thinking, visual communication and design problem-solving, are relevant across the full range of creative industries.

Further study in interior architecture, spatial design or related disciplines is also a common route.