Interior Architecture

MASTER OF ARTS
Post-Professional Degree

Aiming to create ethical, socially conscious design thinkers of the built environment and leaders in the industry

Please email ciarcgwu [dot] edu (ciarc[at]gwu[dot]edu) if you have any questions about admissions or the program.

In the Interior Architecture program at the Corcoran School, we believe in fostering a community that encourages creativity and pushes the boundaries of design with an emphasis on conceptual thinking and the design process. Our studio projects, the core of our curriculum, take advantage of our location in an arts and design school within a major research university in the nation’s capital, and our mission to participate in projects that positively impact social change aligns with the global vision of the university.

The post-professional Master of Arts (MA) is designed to educate students who have previously received an undergraduate degree in interior design, interior architecture or architecture, who want to continue to challenge themselves in an academic setting. This condensed 30-credit one-year program is an integrated curriculum meaning all of the courses within each semester are cohesive, with course content working in tandem and increasing in complexity throughout each semester.

The MA program is developed to expand on operational skills, and it is expected that students will be accepted into the program having already mastered foundational knowledge of the interior design industry in addition to being able to use both the analog and digital tools necessary to design and communicate interior spaces.

Through our studio-based core curriculum, you will work on solving problems with a focus on serving clients of varied income and diversity, with emphasis on teamwork, leadership and social responsibility, preparing you to take on leadership roles in your future firms, allowing for a creative process that leads to collaborative design solutions, and enabling you to make positive changes within your work environments as well as the built environment. You will be expected to research new materials, methods and design solutions, and apply newly acquired cognition to design interiors that contribute to the body of knowledge of the profession.

Our Interior Architecture (IA) professors are internationally recognized design experts and authors who bring diverse experiences and projects into the classroom. As a part of this intellectual environment, our faculty research focuses on aspects of the profession ranging from pedagogy to sustainability to architectural and design history to lighting, with professors publishing as well as speaking at national and international design conferences.

Our students win many prestigious design competitions such as the Steelcase National NEXT Student Design Competition, where in 2021, we had three students in the top 10 entries from 900 entries and 65+ programs entered. We also had a student recognized as a Metropolis Future 100, which is one of the top 100 graduate students in architecture and design programs in the US and Canada sponsored by Metropolis Magazine.

In addition, Design Intelligence ranked our program #17 in our size category for Interior Design Schools Most Hired From by Firms in 2018-19.