4-YEAR UG Professional Program
Spatial Design*
Program Overview
The Spatial Design program is positioned as an entry point to many fields where the space becomes a medium to imagine, experience and impact. It draws from the disciplines of Architecture, Interior Design, Urban Design, Communication & Experience Design. The focus is on the relationship between people and space, and how people move through, experience and interact with spaces.
During the four year journey, an array of modules offers fundamentals of spatial thinking, physical & perceptional sensibilities, shaping space-human interactions, material intelligence, and spatial communication, and more. Practical immersions, field visits, and critical discussions encourage context sensitive, locally relevant, and environmentally responsible spatial design interventions.
An emphasis is placed on SMI’s interdisciplinary ethos, ensuring students follow a choice-based learning pattern. In practice, for example, this allows students to combine their space design abilities with learnings from communication and experience design fields to create interior, public and exhibition spaces that are engaging, interactive and enjoyable for people.
Vision
The vision of the course is to critically explore the idea of ‘space’. Not merely the physical aspect, but as a medium shaped by human experiences as they move through it, its culture, and context. The learner’s understanding of space design and experiences is enriched through diverse perspectives from furniture and product design, communication design, experience design, and systems thinking that SMI’s rich ecosystem offers.
The course prepares aspiring practitioners to navigate diverse, future-faced spatial design practices spanning interior and space design, exhibition design, and spatial experience and production design, community and public space designs, urban research and strategy, and artistic engagements within the everyday urban.
Program Focus
Leveraging the interdisciplinary ecosystem of SMI, the program envisions spatial design as a critical practice and explores spatiality through human behavior & psychology, cultural transformations, community engagement & participation, immersive technologies and advancements, big data and systems thinking. This approach benefits learners as it enables the expansion of space design beyond aesthetic and functional agenda and allows for critical thinking while enriching the students with skills that keep them ahead of the curve.
Instead of solely asking, “Does this look good and serve the function?” students begin to ask:
– Why this intervention?
– What impact does it have on the community and environment?
– Who does it include or exclude?
LEVEL
Undergraduate Degree
AWARD
Bachelor of Design (B.Des)
DURATION
4 Years / Full-time
Last Day to Apply
15 March 2027
Core Values
The graduate in Spatial Design is deeply humanist, is a critical thinker and has the creative confidence to navigate the interdisciplinary nature of design practice that they wish to pursue. The spatial Design course upholds the following values, which locate individual experience at center stage:
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- Social Equity & Inclusion
- Cultural Sensitivity & Contextual Awareness
- Community Care & Empathy
- Ecological Consciousness
- Interdisciplinary Collaboration
For More information, please contact Ninad Koranne (Associate Professor) at ninad.koranne@manipal.edu
Course Structure
Course Structure:
The course comprises of foundation courses, studio based making and learning, critical reading and writing, internships, electives and project-based semesters.
- Foundation introduces students to basic principles and tools of Art, Design and Technology as methods, tools and processes.
- Disciplinary Studios are learning spaces where students develop core disciplinary capabilities, while navigating a trans-disciplinary environment
- General Studies is a common and compulsory programme of study that integrates Humanities, Sciences, Maths, business and finance. Development and Policy Studies and also offers Languages (Spanish, French and German)
- Interim is an immersive introduction to practice in new and emerging areas of art and design and environmental exposure
- Electives are of three kinds – this program allows students to expand their skills, develop the interests as well as provide opportunities for travel exchange
- Internship/Apprenticeship is compulsory work experience done over the summer-break between the 6th and 7th semester
- Project based learning involves the application and synthesis of capabilities acquired. Two projects, pre-thesis and thesis, is culmination of the 4-year undergraduate program, which allows for demonstration of an integration of values, positions, capabilities and practice.
Learning Approach
Learning Approach:
The core values are experienced through a range of interdisciplinary learning approaches:
- Driven by Enquiry through generative themes that are rooted around historical, socio-cultural and political contexts
- Studio Based Learning is encouraged, where students work in teams.
- Theoretical and Critical approach to expand the idea of art and design practice
- Hands-on approach to making for developing self-expression,
- Research and collaborations as ways to widen thought and dimensions of practice.
- Field based enquiry making the real-world into a classroom
- Participatory approach through direct engagement with communities of various practitioners.
Capabilities
Capability Set:
Upon successful completion of this course graduates will have developed the following capabilities:
To effectively design, visualize, communicate and represent spatial design concepts and ideas to a larger audience.
Iterating to translate a line of thinking into a desired form by drawing from one’s exposure to various practices, and to hone skill by repetitive use of certain tools.
To collaborate & co-design with communities to understand and design for their needs and well-being.
To work in professional environments with integrity and competence.
To understand, explore and creatively work with materials, services, and systems.
To understand complexities of multifaceted contexts and develop an integrated and comprehensive approach to design.
To be able to think critically through reflection and identify patterns to develop one’s practice independently.
FAQs
Spatial Design is a multidisciplinary field that draws from interior design, architecture, urban design, experience and communication design, and other allied disciplines. This course at SMI focuses on the relationship between people and space, and how people move through and interact with spaces.
This program invites creative individuals who are passionate about observing, analyzing, and designing spaces, bringing communities together, and imagining sustainable spatial interventions.
Although Spatial Design does deal with aspects and principles of Interior Design, it is not solely an Interior Design degree. It looks at space in far more dynamic terms than solely form, function, and aesthetics. This allows for a lot more flexibility in course output.
After completing the Spatial Design program one may expect to work with leading design studios and practices in the field of interiors and architecture, exhibition design, spatial experience design, with urban think tanks as researchers and strategists, or working with community and public spaces. Apart from this, many students go on to formulate their own unique spatial design practices, while a few others go on to pursue research and higher education where this degree is widely recognized.
A video compilation of the recent workshop fecilitated by Dr Priya Joseph