2020 has been a momentous year for each and every one of us – in collective, shared global ways and as individuals in specific, distinctive ways. We have been connected and isolated simultaneously. Our Masters’ students have shown extraordinary commitment in undertaking a new program and for many of them has also involved courage as they have moved to a new city and away from friends and family.

As we emerge from a ‘state of disaster’ in Victoria, there is a growing awareness of the immensity of the impact of Covid in all areas of life and it is becoming apparent that 2020 will be a watershed moment, a critical turning point in our shared global history. One can imagine looking back at 2020 from 2050 and that it will only be then that the impact and change becomes clear. At this point in time, we are immersed the event unfolding.

However here in this exhibition, in the projects and through the students’ designs and ways of working, we encounter and sense the seeds and emergence of this future. In this virtual interior that opens up and experiments with the experiential, atmospheric and co-presence; engaging spatial, temporal and digital technologies that have provoked us to recognise that these practices will continue to evolve as a critical part of interior design practice

The Master of Interior Design joins the Bachelor of Interior Design (Hons) in the suite of programs that compose RMIT Interior Design. The four-year bachelor degree was launched in 1949 and has been continuously offered under various titles over the past 70 years. Last year we celebrated 80 years of Interior Design at RMIT which means the very first program was offered in 1939, the year that World War 2 begun. The Masters is launched at a similarly confronting and challenging time in a year impacted a global pandemic. In many ways this is very apt as Interior Design is a practice that attends to the way people live; to the relationship between people and their environment in terms of physical and psychological parameters.

The rationale for offering a Master of Interior Design continues the 1949 ambitions held by our predecessors and our alumni in the profession. It is the only dedicated Masters in Australia and as a professional degree, it makes the claim and provides the opportunity for interior designers to have a Masters degree qualification alongside their peers in Architecture and Landscape Architecture. While there is no professional registration requirements, the Masters is critical in terms of recognising value and standing of Interior Design as profession and also ensuring equity within commercial practice.

We have also deliberately situated the program within the Asia Pacific region as part of a network of distinctive concerns, projects, social and cultural contexts that connect with our alumni and partners. The ethos of the Masters is to address key issues that are being grappled within this context and to bring the strengths of RMIT Interior Design in conceptualisation, strategy, venturous practice and transformative design to projects and briefs with industry partners and clients.

2020 will be another memorable year for RMIT Interior Design and as we open up to the future, I would like to congratulate our first 4 Master of Interior Design graduates – Yang Yang, Yiran Le, Joyce Song and Rachel Ren – and wish them the very best. We look forward to continuing to work with Masters students who will continue into 2021 as well as welcoming those who will join us next year.

Thank you to Dr Roger Kemp, Program Manager, who was also the key lead in the Master’s program development; to Dr Adam Nash (Associate Professor, Virtual Interior) for his expertise and creation of the exhibition space, and as coordinator of Interior Practices; and to our Masters studio partners in 2020: Bates Smart, City Harbour and Scentre Group.

Dr. Suzie Attiwill
Associate Dean Interior Design

Welcome to the RMIT University Master of Interior Design Exhibition for 2020. This catalogue and virtual exhibition gather together work undertaken by our inaugural group of students to this new program. We commenced our year with an introductory session on the roof of the Design Hub in Melbourne, then proceeded to a local Pizza restaurant for dinner. We held an introductory class the following day with Associate Professor Adam Nash introducing the group to ideas of the ‘virtual interior’. A day later, we were in lockdown with the spread of COVID-19 rising. The two semesters that followed, like many of our colleagues around the world were conducted through multiple digital platforms, online meetings, phone conversations, text messages and emails with a few frustrations, shifts in time zones but plenty of laughs.

The Master of Interior Design at RMIT is structured around Partnered Design Studios that shift focus each semester from commercial, civic, institutional and social projects. In semester one we partnered up with Bates Smart to look at the changing face of workplace. The final brief intercepted the pressing issues associated with the impact of COVID-19, embracing a decentralised urban model of working proposing a series of post-COVID suburban co-working hubs. In semester two, we partnered with Scentre Group to examine the current challenges to retail through both the impact of COVID-19 and an increasing proportion in online sales. We took the opportunity to rethink retail afforded through speculating on the loss of a high-profile anchor store at the Westfield Doncaster shopping complex in greater Melbourne, Australia.

I would like to congratulate and thank this generous and tight-knit group of students for their unwavering commitment and engagement in the program over the past year. To the four students graduating at this time, I wish you all the very best for a successful future. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the staff who have participated in the teaching and development of the program – Anthony Fryatt, Adam Nash, Suzie Attiwill, Ying-Lan Dann, Kate Geck and Andy Miller. Thanks also to our partners Bates Smart (Michelle Skinner), City Harbour and Scentre Group (Rebecca Burk) for the encouragement and support over the year.

Dr. Roger Kemp,
Program Manager, Master of Interior Design