普瑞特艺术学院

By teaching skills, values, and professional knowledge to bright and motivated students from diverse cultural, professional, and educational backgrounds, the Interior Design Department's MFA program enriches the profession of Interior Design. The department’s educational community encourages philosophical explorations, ethical responsibility, aesthetic expressions, and practical applications. Our graduates are consummate professionals and innovative practitioners as demonstrated in part by their ability to conceive, problem solve, develop, and complete any given project. With a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, the department strives to create interior designers who effectively contribute to culture, through an enhancement of function, health, safety, quality, beauty, and meaning of the human environment.

Applicants with an undergraduate degree in interior design, architecture, or other closely related design fields may be eligible to complete the MFA in two years, a total of 60 credits. A portfolio is required along with relevant information and their specific interests indicated in the application statement. Applicants with undergraduate backgrounds that are unrelated to interior design or architecture but whose applications indicate a strong aptitude for interior design graduate coursework, are required to take a qualifying year of preparatory study, a total of 24 credits, before they continue the MFA degree. These students complete 84 credits in three years. A portfolio for the qualifying year of preparatory study is not required. However, applicants are strongly encouraged to submit samples of creative and/or professional work from relevant disciplines, such as any of the fine arts, industrial design, fashion design, furniture making, exhibition work, communications design, or similar, and to discuss their interest in the application statement. To support our commitment to technological excellence, personal laptop computers are required for all under-graduate students.

Learning Outcomes

Students are able to identify and explore complex problems in the realm of the interior, and generate creative solutions that integrate an understanding of sustainable practice, material research, environmental quality, aesthetics, and changing technologies.

Students acquire proficiency in digital and analog technologies as well as oral and written communication necessary to communicate a body of professional level work, clearly delineating design issues and intent.

Students demonstrate a high level of problem solving in the design of interior environments, cognizant of current issues and developments affecting design study and practice, as well as a critical understanding of the global cultural history and context affecting the interior environment.

Students develop a significant body of work, culminating in an independent thesis project that is rigorous in both conception and execution, demonstrates a synthetic understanding of the knowledge and skills acquired during the course of study, and connects interior design to larger issues of inhabitation, cities and society.