Beyond the Interior
Today's interior designers face unprecedented challenges. It is essential to incorporate sustainable design practices and enhanced building performance into innovative design. A good designer stays abreast of new developments in technology and materials while understanding historical precedents and must remain constantly aware of social change and demographic shifts that reveal new client needs.
The discipline's relevance is growing even as the industry's very foundations are being re-examined. The MFA Interior Design program at Parsons offers a rigorous curriculum that reflects sustainability and social concerns but is firmly based in a scholarly, research-oriented culture.
Designed for Change
Distinguished practicing professionals work with students to explore and question material applications and their environmental impact, craftsmanship and manufacturing processes, building systems and operational energy consumption, digital representation technologies and drawing as means to gain insight, principles of using natural and electric light, fundamentals of color, and the effect of indoor air pollution on human health.
Taking a fundamental role in influencing habitation and social culture, the interior design student is challenged to analyze human behavior, comfort, and the direct relationship of human perception to the built interior. Design as a social practice is the continuous underlying subject of discussion. Graduates are positioned to become exceptional practitioners and knowledgeable educators.
The MFA Interior Design program is accredited by the National Association of
Schools of Art and Design. This program fulfills the education requirement that qualifies graduates to sit for the National Council of Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) professional licensing exam.
DOUBLE MAJOR WITH LIGHTING DESIGN
The School of Constructed Environments offers students wishing to combine graduate studies in interior design and lighting design a unique double major. In the MFA Interior Design and Lighting Design double major, a three-year, 90-credit-hour curriculum, students develop an in-depth technical and aesthetic understanding of both design fields.