A NEW APPROACH IN TEACHING INTERIOR DESIGN STUDIO AT THE AHLIA UNIVERSITY

The turn of the twenty-first century is witnessed extremely fast changes occurring in the interior design profession outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries by the dominance of information technologies that invites more complex design problems resulting in new design methodologies. Therefore, interior design is experimenting with significant changes outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries, where new terms, concepts, and vocabulary emerged replacing simplicity and clarity. Paradoxically, interior design graduates struggle to shift successfully from academic study to the interior design professional practice as they are not used on collaborative work in their study which is the nature of the interior design practice. Responding to these challenges needs to develop a design studio paradigm to improve our programs and the quality of education by creating curricula, syllabi, and teaching materials encouraging an inventive and collaborative design work that enable interior design students to develop the skills needed for their future professional practice. According to the Professional Relations Directorate at Ahlia University, career opportunities for interior design students were looking relatively negative, 62.96% of interior design graduates in 2018 were unemployed. Accordingly, this research describes and evaluate the vertical studio approach which allows students from various levels and skills to collaborate on a design project to create an innovative design that prepares them to the changing needs in the market for the 21st century, it is also believed that this model will be relevant to all design disciplines. The findings of this research show that vertical design studio has a strong potential in the high quality of the students' design projects and recommends applying this paradigm in the interior design department at Ahlia University and other design schools in Bahrain.