Y2 Interior Design students focused on the Design Domain themes, particularly ‘Where do we live?’, to form and present a critical opinion on social housing. In Semester 1, each student looked into the life of a social housing tenant in Glasgow, exploring the interior conditions and context of the city’s social housing provision. They produced analytical portfolios of photographs, drawings, text, and surveys that evidenced their understanding of the habitable spaces and their nature and qualities. In Semester 2, they focused on making, and they developed artefacts that explore factors such as inhabitation and identity, personalisation and the notion of ‘ownership’ of interior spaces, ‘designed’ aesthetics and symbolism, location, infrastructure, and amenities. Whether objects, animations, and/or audio, these outcomes communicate meaningful reflection and design thinking on a politically hot topic.

Y3 Interior Design students used the Design Domain themes, particularly ‘Where do we live?’, to look at tenement housing in Glasgow. In Semester 1, they unpacked what they considered to be important about tenements, including ‘home’ as a diverse created place/space shaped by geography, politics, and cultural values. Each student produced an analytical portfolio of photographs, drawings, text, and surveys that evidenced ways to critically address design heritage, histories and the contemporary. In Semester 2, they’ve translated their collected material and research into an artefact such as model(s), an audio-visual, a manifesto, and/or prints. The process shows their understanding of the nature and qualities of tenements as spaces and places of inhabitation, as well as the value of applying methodologies borrowed from other fields to ‘conventional’ interior design strategies.