Interior Design Studio IV (Special Topics)
Interior Design Studio IV (special topics) is an advanced design studio with special emphasis on research, creative inquiry, process, human behavior, and design development of interior environments. This special topics offering designed by Associate Professors Cuddeback and Ritchie utilized problem-based learning as a positive instructional strategy to foreground the capstone project during the senior year. The students were presented with surprising projects to unravel design expectations and habits and establish an environment for renewing creative inquiry. The studio partnered with Peter Shire, the College of Art & Design 2013 Nadine Carter Russell Chair, as guest critic and studio companion. During the semester students had an opportunity to develop design thinking and methods of creative inquiry through a sequence of design propositions. Projects included transforming patterns found in nature as the inspiration for a pattern, active surface, and fictional construct for the human body. The studio culminated with the design and construction of a full-scale multi-sensory interior environment intended to enhance awareness of the commonplace, banal, and everyday experience.
