Here’s some sample of this fabulous project completed this year at the Royal College of Art. I wrote a challenging brief but the student took it on without fear.

https://www.stevejensen.design/blog/ian-s-barbers-won-retail-design-of-the-year-in-1994-25-years-ago-it-was-juggernaut-design-s-first-built-project-it-was-a-great-moment

The wonder of Interiors and its fragility provides opportunities to experience a variety of design taxonomies. It sits autonomously outside any governing bodies which allows a freedom to fully explore and test existing parameters and self inflicted boundaries. It is essential that this freedom enables Interiors to pursue ambition and redefine what we currently believe is possible and achievable through the study of the subject.

Interior design education and thus practise has always had an identity crisis. It sits astride many disciplines and can lose focus and confidence. Unlike Architecture, Interiors, has an often perceived narrow employment pathway; retail or exhibition design being most obvious. We must encourage and nurture other possibilities with the focus on other things such as film, furniture, theatre, art or research etc. questioning the more traditional pathway exploring more adventurous routes. In turn challenging projects should facilitate advanced thinking and encourage and reward bravery and invention.

Ways of exploring and describing a narrative, space, form and materials etc need to be described through in depth research. Interiors should be inventive and forge exciting and sometimes undefined futures. Research MUST be encouraged in order to examine Interior practice and to test its existing boundaries; essential to nurture a cohort looking forward from a position of power, knowledge and of core Interior thinking, examining all angles and scale from Furniture to the City.

Our reverence to commercial practice, although important, should not confine. Commercial practice should be looking on in awe with inspiration, while teaching needs to rethink and move beyond these commercial constraints, inviting practice to contribute but to not always to be entirely comfortable.