Interiors

Firstly, I would like to congratulate all of the students and the Interiors teaching team for a fantastic year. The students have worked together online, making enormous efforts to work as studios and discuss projects and their contexts with their peers. The staff have developed different ways of teaching creating new materials that work online.

The projects in all three years as usual, have been very active, looking at London, its urban challenges, its vibrant communities and its inherent adaptability and creativity.

The studios have looked at neighbourhood workspaces and community spaces that give the locals options to gather and meet in a safe and socially distanced ways. The students have worked on concepts that think about the 24-hour life of London, and those that work out of conventional hours and their experiences. This has significantly featured those that may be suffering from loneliness and stress-related health challenges. We looked at spaces that would bring neighbourhoods together through storytelling and performance, places for everyday but that create a wonderful sense of belonging.

Some of the students were a part of a research collaboration with professional consultancies, building temporary homeless shelters. These students have investigated the many ways of why homelessness happens and how that trauma affects the homeless individual. Looking at how the interior can work to support recovery and be a place of sanctuary, allowing the inhabitant time to convalesce and recuperate. Several students have developed ideas for live-work spaces and created eventful spaces that celebrate the work of artists and performers.

The students through working though their own complex lives within lockdown have empathised with others and have created interiors that bring togetherness, colour and vibrancy, a sense of care and recovery, and ultimately wellness.