Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design

Programme Description

Our distinguished international programme offers students a unique Master level design-research education with a critical and experimental focus on the complex and developing field of Interior Architecture.

Interior Architects today are faced with a changing world of new realities, technologies, socio-political, environmental and economic challenges; consequently the practice of the designer needs to expand, react and determine future roles. For this reason, we question the conventions of Interior Architecture across disciplinary edges in order to create new perspectives in the production of space. Design as research is viewed as multidimensional, circulating along numerous pathways and scales, from the local to the global, from objects to architecture and beyond. Students are expected to be independent and forward thinking. Our multidisciplinary and proactive approach to design education creates a sense of openness, possibility and intellectual rigour to nurture innovative 21st-century designers.

The international student community at MIARD works closely with a notable staff of architects, interior architects, designers, artists, researchers and experts from a variety of disciplines. Our staff provides a diverse and stimulating educational culture for students to advance their knowledge, professional network and career opportunities.  We also maintain an active public programme including events that showcase our community, projects and publications. Public talks, symposiums, and conversations are complemented by national and international exhibitions and excursions. Every year, prominent practitioners from diverse disciplines are invited to talk and work with our students and staff.

A unique quality of our programme is the concept of making public. We exhibit and promote student work, and participate in professional events and external collaborations with renowned institutions. Recent work by students and alumni has been exhibited at Salone del Mobile Milano, Het Nieuwe Instituut, TENTLondon among others.  Our projects have earned international press in publications such as Domus, Dezeen, Archinect, and Designboom.  MIARD was recently published as a ‘leading international Master programme’ in Frame Magazine book Masterclass: Interior Design, Guide to the World’s Leading Graduate Schools.

Students work in state-of-the-art facilities and are provided spacious design studios to work on their projects. In our building, students have access to production ‘stations’ that are equipped with analogue and digital technologies with highly-skilled technicians available to help realize their work. Finally, we are located in the centre of Rotterdam, a post-industrial, culturally diverse global and creative city renowned for architecture, design and the arts. And as a contemporary programme, we operate from the point of view that design education today must be adaptable to a variety of external forces to remain relevant and forward thinking.

Please visit Piet Zwart Institute site for more information.

Practical Information for this course

*The programme was formerly titled: Master Interior Architecture + Retail Design [MIARD]

Cover project: The Schizophrenic Interior and the Aesthetics of the Imaginary - Relics of a Post-AI-Revolution by Merle Flügge (photo by Sander van Wettum).