Interior, Architectural and Spatial Design MA (eca)

This programme runs over three consecutive semesters and is full time. The programme is composed of core and elective courses.

Semesters 1 and 2 are split into 3 courses of 20 Credits each, covering design practice and theoretical studies in the field of design. The summer semester consists of a single 60 credit course.

Semester 1

In Semester 1, there are two core courses:

• Adapting Interiors
• Reading Interiors

Both are taught by IASD staff and focus on a chosen site, situation, or institution.

The remaining 20 credit course is elective, which you will choose from a selected list of courses with a more theoretical and written focus. These are delivered by other colleagues in ECA.

Semester 2

In Semester 2, the two core courses are:

• Connecting Interiors (taught by IASD staff and focusing on the chosen site)
• Disseminating Design Practices (delivered by other colleagues in ECA)

The third course in this semester is elective. You are encouraged to choose a course that will develop your design thinking beyond interiors to gain valuable experience in a related field.

You may take suitable elective courses from anywhere within the University. Options vary each year and are dependent on level, availability and timetable suitability.

Summer semester

The final summer semester consists of a single core course, Intersections, which contains three elements:

• An individual ‘synthesis’ design research project, based in our site/situation/institution, but following a project brief of your own choice.
• A group project in which you work together as a team disseminating the approaches and work of the programme to the broader public beyond ECA.
• A portfolio in which you document your learning throughout the year and propose the future directions of your practice.

Teaching

Our core teaching and learning is based in our studio, which is a collaborative working space for staff and students.

Working with our experienced staff, we expect you to take charge of the direction of your coursework as a postgraduate student. We are here to guide and advise you on developing your own practices and thinking in new directions, rather than instructing you in preconceived ideas and practices.

While much of your work is self-directed, your weekly core classes will involve engagement with your peers and academic staff. In these classes, you will encounter:

• lectures and seminars
• group and individual design tutorials
• workshop activities
• intensive design ‘lock-ins’.

In our core courses you will explore the potential of our host institution and/or situation through design projects set at different scales, from detail to masterplan. In each, you will follow a structured process that will introduce you to practices and processes from building survey to construction drawing, urban and community, to structural analysis.

In the final third semester you will pursue design projects of your own with greater autonomy, building on the approaches you have learned in earlier semesters, and turning these approaches to your own career aims and objectives.

Assessment

We have designed our core assessments to reflect and reward a continuous and student-centred model of creative learning. To complete each core course you will produce a portfolio of work summarising and reflecting on your learning journey, as well as the resolution of completed design work.

Along the way, you will produce specific pieces of work for interim review, including drawings, physical models, short pieces of writing, digital animations, and temporary installations.

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses

We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

We think of Edinburgh as a ‘living lab’ which we can use to experiment with the ways in which interior, architectural and spatial design can unlock the potential of buildings and the communities and institutions that occupy them.

Each of our core courses begins with a visit to our site, situation, and/or institution of interest, and we regularly engage with those institutions and communities throughout the design development process for each project.

Each of our core courses, and our programme, all culminate in events, physical exhibitions, or digital media that you will conceive, design and implement in order to share your work with the people for and about whom it has been created.

To successfully engage and complete this programme, we expect students to do the following:

• Critically engage with and analyse the characteristics of an aspect of a given interior, through a variety of theoretical lenses, with a view to making original proposals for its adaptation.
• Use a significant range of forefront professional skill, techniques, practices and materials to conceive, develop, and resolve original detailed designs for the adaptation of an aspect of a given interior.
• Communicate, using appropriate methods, diverse understandings and proposals for the adaptation of an aspect of a given interior to a range of audiences with different levels of knowledge/expertise, including peers, more senior colleagues and specialists.
• Using autonomy and judgement, write a critically constructed, original and personal definition of ‘the interior’.
• Apply varying interior, architectural and spatial theories, through a range of special research techniques and enquiry in the formulation of a brief for a given interior.
• Show independence and initiative in developing masterplan responses to complex problems in a given interior.
• Communicate to a range of audiences a cohesive creative solution of outline scheme design.
• Apply critical analysis to a body of work in relation to a given site, and using informed judgement, develop a synthesised design response to it.
• Develop and realise an original creative response to the practice of professional dissemination within the context of interior, architectural and spatial design.
• Communicate professionally an edited and critically analysed body of work practices in response to the presentation of a body of self-generated work relating to the programme.

We have a strong track record of graduates working in interior design and architectural practices both here in the UK and overseas, or setting up their own businesses once they have completed the programme.

Graduates have also gone on to further academic study at masters or PhD level in various institutions around the world.

Field trips

Our core course consists of design projects that are site-based and you be spending much time engaging with these sites and situations in the city. In the past, these have included:

• various historic buildings on the university campus
• the former Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
• the Edinburgh Freemason’s Hall
• Summerhall Arts centre
• Leith Custom House.

In addition, where appropriate, we organise day trips to encounter buildings, exhibitions or events that are relevant to your studies.

Campus facilities

Our base is a studio in ECA’s Lauriston Campus, in the heart of Edinburgh. This is where you will have a place to draw, make models, meet your classmates for social and group sessions, and attend classes and seminars.

The ECA Campus is well-furnished with diverse workshops facilitating digital and analogue methods. We encourage you to use these, and you can access them with short induction courses. It also has two art and architecture libraries, and numerous spaces to encounter your fellow students and their work.

The Lauriston campus is 10 minutes’ walk from the University of Edinburgh’s Central Campus, with its libraries, museums and social spaces.

In addition Scotland’s national galleries, museum, opera house and parliament – all examples of exceptional design, both ancient and modern - are all within 30 minutes’ walk.

Lauriston campus redevelopment

ECA are excited to be undertaking a capital redevelopment of ECA’s Lauriston campus over the next 3 years, from April 2024 to April 2027.

The project aims to maximise the use of existing space, improve accessibility, and create a vibrant campus that fosters collaboration and innovation.

The project involves refurbishing and repurposing various spaces across the Lauriston campus, including technical facilities, student and teaching spaces, and the relocation of the Reid School of Music from Alison House to the Lauriston campus. New social spaces, seminar rooms, and studios are being created to accommodate our growing community.

You can find more about the project at the below link:

Building work starts at ECA’s Lauriston campus | Edinburgh College of Art

These entry requirements are for the 2025/26 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2026/27 academic year will be published on 1 Oct 2025.

A UK 2:1 honours degree or its international equivalent, in a relevant subject such as interior design, interior architecture, architecture, landscape architecture, product design or 3D design.

You must submit a portfolio as part of your application. Your portfolio should include:

• completed interior, architectural, spatial or landscape projects undertaken individually or as part of a group (please note that you should state your involvement in the group projects)
• evidence of hand drawing, sketching, model making, orthographic drawing and rendered visuals
• engagement with materials and detailing
• work demonstrating a range of research methods and lines of enquiry
• development work, demonstrating the iterative design process, as well as finished projects.

As part of your portfolio submission, you should include a personal video, no more than 2 minutes long, talking about your best piece of work.

As part of the application process, you must submit a personal statement and CV. Your personal statement should include why you want to study at ECA and what you feel you would contribute to the programme.

Selection will be made on a variety of key criteria:

• engagement with existing buildings: how does your work demonstrate an understanding of and engagement with the opportunities of a specific building or site?
• research: what has generated your design ideas and what methods did you use to support this?
• conceptual ambition: what are the big ideas driving your work? How are you questioning current design thinking?
• development: how have you developed those ideas in your project work through the iterative design process?
• resolution: how have projects been resolved and communicated?
• awareness: what do you consider interior, architectural and spatial design to be, and where does your work sit within the discipline?
• evidence of exploring interior, architectural and spatial design through a number of media including hand sketching, model making, 3D visualisations

If you do not meet the academic entry requirements, we may still consider your application on the basis of your portfolio and/or relevant professional experience.

Students from China

This degree is Band C.

• Postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country

English language requirements

Regardless of your nationality or country of residence, you must demonstrate a level of English language competency which will enable you to succeed in your studies.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.0 in each component. We do not accept IELTS One Skill Retake to meet our English language requirements.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 20 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced (CAE) / C2 Proficiency (CPE): total 185 with at least 169 in each component.
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 73 with at least 59 in each component. We do not accept PTE Academic Online.
• Oxford ELLT: 8 overall with at least 6 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

Find out more about our language requirements:

• English language requirements

Additional costs

Students should allow up to £500 a year for material costs to cover the four core design courses (£125 per course) in relation to items such as:

• sketchbooks
• drawing equipment
• printing
• artefact
• model and artefact making materials

Depending on students' choice of materials this could be less, and the use of recycled and reused materials is encouraged.

Printing requirements on the programme will be kept to a minimum with electronic submissions used in the majority of situations. Please note other courses may have associated costs and students should contact the course organiser of those directly with any further queries.

Tuition fees

Funding for postgraduate study is different to undergraduate study, and many students need to combine funding sources to pay for their studies.

Most students use a combination of the following funding to pay their tuition fees and living costs:

• borrowing money
  • taking out a loan
  • family support
• personal savings
• income from work
• employer sponsorship
• scholarships

Explore sources of funding for postgraduate study

Featured funding

• Edinburgh College of Art scholarships

UK government postgraduate loans

If you live in the UK, you may be able to apply for a postgraduate loan from one of the UK’s governments.

The type and amount of financial support you are eligible for will depend on:

• your programme
• the duration of your studies
• your residency status.

Programmes studied on a part-time intermittent basis are not eligible.

• UK government and other external funding

Other funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding