Interior Architecture and Furniture Design

In this year’s Degree Exhibition, the students in the Bachelor’s programme in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design present degree projects that move between history and future, between preservation and transformation. With a starting point in both archival material and contemporary needs, they examine how rooms, objects and architecture can be reinterpreted, shared and activated in new ways.

Several degree projects are based on what once was – from the documentation and translation of lost places to the design of the ruin as a possible future. Interpreting fragments of Stockholm’s first theatre building leads to speculation on a future stage space for dance, while a medieval tower is examined as a contemporary residence. Museums’ exhibition spaces are examined through norm-critical perspectives, and the role of the cinema is reinforced through spatial interventions that elevate the shared experience.

As society changes, new needs for shared and flexible spaces arise. The students propose gathering places for flood-affected areas in southern Sweden, explore social sustainability in public spaces, and examine how agency and participation can be strengthened for young people in sparsely populated areas, or for individuals in institutional residential homes. By investigating the table and the collective meal, or the possibility of sharing a holiday cottage, the degree projects highlight how architecture and design can create conditions for solidarity and exchange.

Furniture and spatial objects become carriers of meaning through material, craft, queer semiotics and reformulated civic ceremonies. Questions are simultaneously raised about alternative forms of housing and sustainable resources – from tiny house areas to the reprogramming of a public bathhouse. Rest and recovery in the city’s public spaces are examined, and through unprogrammed additions to unprogrammed spaces, places are proposed for spontaneity and change. The role of technology in design is also a recurring theme.

With experimental methods and critical perspectives, the students open up new ways of shaping our shared surroundings – to preserve, reformulate, share and speculate on the future of spaces and objects.

Bo Pilo
Lecturer and programme co-ordinator, Interior Architecture and Furniture Design

Christian Björk
Senior lecturer, Bachelor’s programme in Interior Architecture and Furniture Design