Emerging Ideas ︎
The Master of Interior Design (M.I.D.) program offers an
education in critical spatial inquiry that elevates and reinvents the
discipline of interior architecture by mining and imagining human conditions in
our built environment. In doing so, the program adds criticality to the
profession, cultivating scholars, academics and critics, while generating
emerging and alternative professions.
Students who possess baccalaureate degrees in any discipline can enter the M.I.A. three-year track, while students who possess baccalaureate degrees in interior architecture, interior design, environmental arts or architecture are eligible to enter the M.I.A. two-year track.
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Emerging Ideas
The MIA argues for Interior Design as a unique body of knowledge, with a distinct discourse, canon, and set of methodologies, filtered through the lens of art and architectural criticism and theory. As contemporary architectural practice continues to focus on issues of technology, technique, urbanism, and other aspects of exteriority, the MID program looks to advance the role of the human condition in the discourse, and to argue for the social, cultural, material, sensorial, and communicative realms of design.
Woodbury University’s MID program provides students with a curriculum that is critical and relevant. This agile program allows students to actively participate in the crafting of their education, to inflect each course with their own critical approach, and to specialize in their own professional pursuits. Student involvement fosters methodological diversity and ensures that the program will evolve and adapt with each new cohort.
The Emerging Ideas curriculum supports every area of learning within your interior architecture education: Criticism, Studio, Visualization, Figuring Space, and Practice. The Emerging Ideas seminars provide an active relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge content. Through faculty facilitated seminars students will develop a consensus of the scope of research their cohort will explore.
Emerging Ideas 1: Navigation and Orienteering Contemporary trends and issues affecting and articulating the current body of knowledge in Interior Architecture
Emerging Ideas 2: Investigation and Steering Collaborative research builds toward a cohort driven area of investigation
Emerging Ideas 3: Acquisition and Directing Unification of research transformed through negotiation and discourse
Emerging Ideas 4: Methodological Slant Methodological approach declared and explored in preparation for Studio 4
Emerging Ideas 5: Aggregation and Realizing Forum for intentional and directed critique of research agenda
Emerging Ideas 6: Conclusion and Assessing Organize and determine the outcome of research
As the linchpin of the program, the criticism track is invested in the creation of disciplinary content, which reflects the historical and theoretical frameworks within, and outside of, the terrain of Interior Architecture, striving to develop a strong body of literature that reflects the specific theoretical concerns of the interior environment and human habitation.
Criticism 1: Fieldwork Los Angeles LA’s interior history and theory explored through observational research and analysis
Criticism 2: Declaring the Canon Declaring the history and theory of Interior Architecture from pre-history through the present
Criticism 3: Rewriting the Canon Contemporary theory and criticism used to reinterpret and expand the discipline
Criticism 4: Thesis Preparation Self-directed study and research leveraged toward a thesis proposal
Studio is the vital core of design study. It is a cohort, a culture, a place, and a practice; it epitomizes application and engagement in design learning and pedagogy. It both challenges and mirrors the profession, inculcating the student into disciplinary methodologies and operations. Within the semester, it is a node, drawing in and integrating all other realms of study, providing a dynamic platform for the collision, realization, and testing of ideas, knowledge, and technique.
Studios 1, 2, and 3: Fundamental and comprehensive design studios include:
Studio 1: The New Frontier of Space
Studio 2: Synthesizing Complexity
Studio 3: Pathways and Modalities
Studio 4: Fieldwork / Study AwayMethodological agenda declared in Emerging Ideas 4 is aligned with a destination for exploration
Studio 5: Convergence
Choose topic and develop thesis
Studio 6: Thesis
Declare and defend a claim within the discipline
Design representation is not only a collection of techniques and skills that yield objects and artifacts, but a particular form of thinking through which design is brought into being. It is both a process and a thing. Design methodology is the means by which we move through the complex and nuanced world from thinking to making; from idea to artifact, communicating through the conventions of design representation, mapping, modeling, and analysis to synthesize and promote design agendas.
Visualization 1: Making Technique
Learn basic drawing and modeling skills
Visualization 2: Analytic Constructions
Use drawings and 3-dimensional representations to diagram, analyze and communicate
Visualization 3: Advanced Drawing
Modeling Drawing and modeling generates conceptual designs
This area of concentration focuses on the making of space through material construction and invention, detailing, fabrication, and tectonics, as well as building understanding through the social content of codes, behavior, and planning practices. Students will be versed in the practical, functional, phenomenological, and performative aspects of transforming design work into physical form.
Figuring Space 1: Materiality and Making Material properties and assemblies
Figuring Space 2: Code Analysis and Construction Materials and methods of detailing, fabrication, documentation, and specification
Figuring Space 3: Impact and Implication Material logics through case study and performative modeling
The practice realm consists of two perspectives: teaching normative standards of the interior design profession, as well as encouraging students to explore emerging and alternative methods of practicing within a discipline that strongly reflects their area of research and practice agenda.
Practice 1: Ethics and the Profession Basic concepts, codes, procedures and policies in standard and alternative practices
Practice 2: Commentary on Interior Architecture Forum for discussing the alternatives of practice and pursuit
Students who possess baccalaureate degrees in any discipline can enter the M.I.A. three-year track, while students who possess baccalaureate degrees in interior architecture, interior design, environmental arts or architecture are eligible to enter the M.I.A. two-year track.
Emerging Ideas
The MIA argues for Interior Design as a unique body of knowledge, with a distinct discourse, canon, and set of methodologies, filtered through the lens of art and architectural criticism and theory. As contemporary architectural practice continues to focus on issues of technology, technique, urbanism, and other aspects of exteriority, the MID program looks to advance the role of the human condition in the discourse, and to argue for the social, cultural, material, sensorial, and communicative realms of design.
Woodbury University’s MID program provides students with a curriculum that is critical and relevant. This agile program allows students to actively participate in the crafting of their education, to inflect each course with their own critical approach, and to specialize in their own professional pursuits. Student involvement fosters methodological diversity and ensures that the program will evolve and adapt with each new cohort.
The Emerging Ideas curriculum supports every area of learning within your interior architecture education: Criticism, Studio, Visualization, Figuring Space, and Practice. The Emerging Ideas seminars provide an active relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge content. Through faculty facilitated seminars students will develop a consensus of the scope of research their cohort will explore.
Emerging Ideas 1: Navigation and Orienteering Contemporary trends and issues affecting and articulating the current body of knowledge in Interior Architecture
Emerging Ideas 2: Investigation and Steering Collaborative research builds toward a cohort driven area of investigation
Emerging Ideas 3: Acquisition and Directing Unification of research transformed through negotiation and discourse
Emerging Ideas 4: Methodological Slant Methodological approach declared and explored in preparation for Studio 4
Emerging Ideas 5: Aggregation and Realizing Forum for intentional and directed critique of research agenda
Emerging Ideas 6: Conclusion and Assessing Organize and determine the outcome of research
Criticism
As the linchpin of the program, the criticism track is invested in the creation of disciplinary content, which reflects the historical and theoretical frameworks within, and outside of, the terrain of Interior Architecture, striving to develop a strong body of literature that reflects the specific theoretical concerns of the interior environment and human habitation.
Criticism 1: Fieldwork Los Angeles LA’s interior history and theory explored through observational research and analysis
Criticism 2: Declaring the Canon Declaring the history and theory of Interior Architecture from pre-history through the present
Criticism 3: Rewriting the Canon Contemporary theory and criticism used to reinterpret and expand the discipline
Criticism 4: Thesis Preparation Self-directed study and research leveraged toward a thesis proposal
Studio
Studio is the vital core of design study. It is a cohort, a culture, a place, and a practice; it epitomizes application and engagement in design learning and pedagogy. It both challenges and mirrors the profession, inculcating the student into disciplinary methodologies and operations. Within the semester, it is a node, drawing in and integrating all other realms of study, providing a dynamic platform for the collision, realization, and testing of ideas, knowledge, and technique.
Studios 1, 2, and 3: Fundamental and comprehensive design studios include:
Studio 1: The New Frontier of Space
Studio 2: Synthesizing Complexity
Studio 3: Pathways and Modalities
Studio 4: Fieldwork / Study AwayMethodological agenda declared in Emerging Ideas 4 is aligned with a destination for exploration
Studio 5: Convergence
Choose topic and develop thesis
Studio 6: Thesis
Declare and defend a claim within the discipline
Visualization
Design representation is not only a collection of techniques and skills that yield objects and artifacts, but a particular form of thinking through which design is brought into being. It is both a process and a thing. Design methodology is the means by which we move through the complex and nuanced world from thinking to making; from idea to artifact, communicating through the conventions of design representation, mapping, modeling, and analysis to synthesize and promote design agendas.
Visualization 1: Making Technique
Learn basic drawing and modeling skills
Visualization 2: Analytic Constructions
Use drawings and 3-dimensional representations to diagram, analyze and communicate
Visualization 3: Advanced Drawing
Modeling Drawing and modeling generates conceptual designs
Figuring Space
This area of concentration focuses on the making of space through material construction and invention, detailing, fabrication, and tectonics, as well as building understanding through the social content of codes, behavior, and planning practices. Students will be versed in the practical, functional, phenomenological, and performative aspects of transforming design work into physical form.
Figuring Space 1: Materiality and Making Material properties and assemblies
Figuring Space 2: Code Analysis and Construction Materials and methods of detailing, fabrication, documentation, and specification
Figuring Space 3: Impact and Implication Material logics through case study and performative modeling
Practice
The practice realm consists of two perspectives: teaching normative standards of the interior design profession, as well as encouraging students to explore emerging and alternative methods of practicing within a discipline that strongly reflects their area of research and practice agenda.
Practice 1: Ethics and the Profession Basic concepts, codes, procedures and policies in standard and alternative practices
Practice 2: Commentary on Interior Architecture Forum for discussing the alternatives of practice and pursuit
Christoph Korner
MArch, Dipl Ing Arch, NCIDQ, IIDA, IDEC
Chair of Interior Design
Christoph Korner received his degree in Architecture and Urban Design from the Technical University in Braunschweig, Germany, followed by a MArch from UCLA with an emphasis on History and Theory. Since then he has been a part of GRAFT, an award winning design firm with offices in Los Angeles, Berlin and Beijing. Projects range from Master Planning, Urban Design, Architecture, Interior Design, Exhibition Design, to Product Design.
In addition his work has been exhibited and published on several occasions and he authored articles and books. In recent years his dedication gravitated increasingly towards teaching and academia, culminating in his current position as Chair of Interior Architecture at Woodbury University in Los Angeles.