EXT26-105 - Designing Interior Spaces

Course Description

student looking at architecture model

Enrollment is open to students in grades 9-12.

Design immersive spaces that shape how people experience the world around them in this dynamic one-week intensive. You'll explore spatial experience design—a holistic discipline that draws from architecture, interior design, landscape, furniture, lighting, materials, and branding to create comprehensive environments. Through hands-on projects such as designing a restaurant, retail store, or residence, you'll develop both conceptual thinking skills and practical fundamentals like drafting and model making. Learn strategies designers use to understand, evaluate, and create both built and virtual environments, focusing on how overall immersive spaces and detailed elements—furniture, lighting, materials, graphics—work together. You'll build skills in concept development and visual communication through sketching, formal drawings, models, and verbal presentations, developing your own personal design process. Your week culminates in displaying projects that demonstrate your ability to design thoughtful, experiential spaces from concept to detailed execution.

Learner Outcomes

Students are introduced to spatial design principles such as scale, proportion, flow, hierarchy, and the relationship between function and form

Students learn to integrate design elements—architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, materials, and graphics—into cohesive experiential spaces

Students develop and communicate design concepts using multiple methods such as sketching, drafting, and model making

Students will explore personal design processes by practicing strategies professionals use to understand, evaluate, and shape how people experience environments

Students will practice explaining their work, their process, and their artistic intent to their peers and giving each other constructive feedback.