MA Interior and Spatial Design
- Study Mode: Full Time
- Location: Distance Learning
- Duration: One Year
- Start Date: September 2025
You can also study this course:
Create design strategies for the home, workplace, leisure, hospitality, and healthcare sectors while gaining a deep understanding of the essential issues that interior and spatial designers must address in every project.
With a focus on key emerging themes within society, sustainability and wellbeing, this online full-time postgraduate degree can help you enhance and refine your existing skills and knowledge.
Interior and spatial design is a sector which encompasses every aspect of our being. From the homes we live in, the places we work and the spaces we visit, this global industry, and the employers within it, must stay innovative to cater to the needs of consumers, and the planet. With the right teaching, you’ll be able to gain a unique understanding which will make you stand-out as a thinking-practitioner.
With a history of delivery expert craft, art and design education for more than 130 years, Buckinghamshire New University is the perfect place for you to learn the skills and knowledge that can help you take the next step in your creative career.
This MA Interior and Spatial Design is led by a dedicated teaching team with a wealth of experience within the interior and spatial design, exhibition design, landscape design, model-making and design visualisation and animation industry. Many of your tutors on this course are also involved with design practice and research.
Although this MA is offered online, we pride ourselves on a rich and varied programme as well as giving you access to industry-leading professionals where possible. You may have the opportunity to be part of industry CPD online events with outside bodies, such as SBID and leading companies, among others, this is to help prepare you for the research activities proposed in the programme.
This postgraduate degree runs as both a one-year full-time option and a two-year part-time option.
Our novel approach to teaching, with online delivery and a virtual classroom capability, helps our you make the most of your time and allows you to balance your studies around other life and work commitments.
What will I study?
At the heart of the course is the focus on your personal interests and priorities; we advocate and teach independent researching skills so that you can apply this learning in your own context and in line with your own, or your organisations goals.
This course is about progressing existing and creating a new generation of designers who specialise in the design for the most pressing issues of the 21st century. The unique online curriculum combines theory and practical tasks that focus on key elements of research in sustainable reuse and understanding its environmental, societal, economic, and functional implications and developing strategies that account for the importance of social and ecological responsibility.
The MA offers you the opportunity to rethink the existing building stock and redefine new purposes and ways of using the urban fabric. You will analyse various case studies and look at the project's impact on the environment and will develop an understanding of technical processes such as construction, material sourcing and adaptive reuse to make a creative proposal for their project.
During your time on the course, you’ll establish a clear aesthetic, theoretical and technological approach to adaptive reuse that properly equips you to engage in design practice.
Through various modules your lecturers will provide you with current insight into the subject area, helping you refine your new skills, methods and knowledge to become critically engaged with your chosen subject area. During your time on the course, you’ll establish a clear aesthetic, theoretical and technological approach to adaptive reuse that properly equips you to engage in design practice.
You’ll conduct independent research investigations on a selected topic of interest and take responsibility for managing time, plus develop knowledge and connections within the field of interior and spatial design. You will be expected to produce projects based on your own research evidence, developed, and explained visually and via referenced text.
At the end of the course, you will have the opportunity to produce a focused Research Dissertation, throughout this you will receive one on one support with an allocated supervisor.
How will I be taught and assessed?
During your time on the postgraduate Interior and Spatial Design degree, you’ll take part in virtual scenario-based exercises, supported by up-to-date material that provide complex and challenging content to stretch capabilities in a supportive learning environment.
Module materials will be available on the course’s virtual learning site and module briefs will be given and explained with core information as a guide to research areas. It will be your responsibility to ensure your equipment and software installation is adequate for home use. Verbal presentation will be required, so webcam facilities should also be installed.
During the MA degree, you will also be guided through the following activities:
- Collaborative online research skills
- Essay writing to academic standards
- Portfolio making
- Presentation and communication skills
- Concept design
- Specification and development
- Independent Study towards projects and assignments
- Interactive online lectures and seminars where learners can participate and understand the nature of applying critical and creative skills and working in the industry.
What are the course entry requirements?
Applications are accepted from students who demonstrate a good degree of prior knowledge with a relevant Honours degree, or equivalent knowledge shown via an online portfolio. Evidence of professional practice knowledge without a prior degree is an acceptable mode of entry into the programme.
Modules
This provides a guide of the modules that make up your course. You can find more information about how your course is structured on our Academic Advice section.
What are the tuition fees
Home
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Home, Academic Year 2025 - 2026: £8,810 per year *
International
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Overseas/International, Academic Year 2025 - 2026: £8,810 per year *
Following the Government’s announcement of 4 November 2024, we will be increasing our full-time undergraduate tuition fees for UK students to £9,535 per year from the start of the 2025/26 academic year. Our part-time fees for UK undergraduate students will increase to £7,145 per annum. Please visit , on the Government’s website, for more information about the changes.
Tuition fees for Home undergraduate students (including with foundation year) may increase in subsequent years for both new and continuing students in line with an inflationary amount determined by the Government.  
Tuition fees for both new and continuing international students may be subject to an inflationary increase based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 12-month period to 31 January each year.  
Tuition fees for postgraduate courses and CPD may be subject to an inflationary increase based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 12-month period to 31 January each year. This increase will apply to both new and continuing students.  
We understand, and really appreciate, the significant financial commitment our students make when they choose to study at BNU. We take our responsibilities to our students very seriously, and are ambitious for each to reach their full potential and succeed in their chosen career. Our fees help us to continue providing our students with a high-quality education, and to invest in the services and facilities which create an excellent student experience at BNU.
The following factors will be considered by the University when we set the annual fees: measures of inflation such as the retail price indices; projected increases in University costs; and any changes in the level of funding for teaching received from the Government.
What are my career prospects?
The MA Interior and Spatial Design degree offers an opportunity for professionals advance their careers in design, healthcare consultancy or other related fields.
The need for designers who can create spaces, buildings or interior products to achieve, through research, a positive environment for occupant’s wellbeing has never been in such demand. Once completing the course, you will become part of a new generation of designers specialising in the design for health and wellbeing.
Course leader
