Interior Architecture with Foundation Year

Why study Interior Architecture with Foundation Year at Liverpool John Moores University?

• Undertake a Foundation Year designed to prepare you for study at higher education

• 100% of students surveyed on this course agreed teaching staff supported their learning well (NSS 2025)

• Students can access study abroad opportunities, apply for overseas travel awards and take exchanges

• Access to some of the UK's best examples of urban redevelopment and iconic buildings

• Taught in the RIBA award-winning, purpose-built John Lennon Art and Design Building

• Direct involvement in live artistic projects

• International Foundation Year course available offering direct progression onto this degree programme

• LJMU ranked 13th university in the UK for Architecture (The Times UK University Rankings 2025)

About your course
This programme gives you the opportunity to work on a range of authentic architectural projects with input from practicing architects and interior design specialist in a dynamic studio environment with access to industry standard technical facilities. The emphasis of this programme is the creative adaptation, repurposing, remodelling, rebranding, restyling and refitting of existing buildings.

Taught principally through a studio environment that is seamlessly underpinned and informed by lectures and workshops, the over-arching ambition is to create graduates with artistic flair, and who are technically skilled and grounded in the demands of the profession.

The learning and teaching environment is progressively informed by research in pedagogy in the creative field. While teaching the curriculum, the programme also develops less tangible skills in students, such as communication, presentation and self-motivation; a key ambition is to create independent thinkers, adept at resolving problems with creativity and originality.

A broad educational experience is offered within which students can develop diverse rigorous and creative approaches to design issues that explore and test appropriate resolutions in relation to contemporary and anticipated contextual issues.

Design projects form the backbone of the core teaching strategy. These projects are seen as primers to a divergent creative and critical thought process: they are characterised by individual interpretation and interest of the subjects that encourage imaginative solutions through discursive studio forums.

As you progress through the degree, the design projects gradually become more complex and ambitious in their intentions and integrative in their nature. At degree level, predominantly, the city of Liverpool is used as a contextual laboratory to test concepts that have a local flavour with global implications.

The aim is to develop graduate skills and knowledge such that you become an autonomous thinker who is capable of analysing, visualising and testing potential solutions to increasingly complex spatial and social issues within an increasingly holistic global scenario.

Foundation Year

The Foundation Year is the first year of a four-year degree programme. It is a preparatory year of study that equips students with the necessary academic and practical skills for success in higher education, with the aim to introduce students to contemporary art and design practices, including those required to undertake studio-based projects at higher education.

Once students pass the Foundation Year they will progress directly onto the first year of the BA (Hons) Interior Architecture degree. If you are a full-time UK student, you will qualify for student financial support for the full duration of your course (subject to eligibility criteria).