Between Education and Profession: An Evaluation of Graduation Projects in the Field of Interior Architecture in Turkey

Abstract

Design studios are at the core of architecture, interior architecture, or design education. Different design problems are experienced and solved in these studios every term or year. The last step of the design studios is the graduation/degree project, which is characteristic of a threshold between education and profession. The scope of the study is to examine the graduation/degree projects’ approaches of the schools that are providing interior architecture education in Turkey and to evaluate their project outputs. Thus, quantitative analyses and qualitative evaluations have been made on the documents of the MEKAN/İç Mimarlık Öğrencileri Ulusal Bitirme Projeleri Yarışması (Interior Design Students National Graduation Projects Competition), which are served as an important archive.

In this respect, within the scope of the study, an inventory has been tried to be put forward by evaluating the competition processes through the participant projects between 2012-2021. Firstly, an analysis has been made on the numerical distribution of all the participant projects according to the years and the diversity of the participating schools. Then, more detailed analyses have been carried out on the award-winning projects by narrowing the sample group. In addition, developments in the matters of the perspectives of different schools on design problems, their proposals for solutions, their design representations, etc. have been brought to light. As researchers and educators, it has been tried to open a way for how interior architecture education to reconstruct itself in the future, by rethinking the education itself. 

Keywords

• Interior architecture education
• Graduation project
• MEKAN competition
• Design studio
• Degree project

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