Become an interior design leader and innovator, setting standards for critical thinking, sustainable practice, ethical and social responsibility, professional aptitude and collaboration as you enhance and transform the built environment.
At Pratt, one of the most prominent programs in the country, you’ll study interior design as an integral element of the built environment, generating creative solutions that combine light and color, craft and making, material research, evolving technologies, sustainable practice, and social responsibility, including global cultural histories and diverse contexts. Our CIDA accredited BFA program prepares you to think critically, innovate, and become an interior design leader, expanding the potential of professional practice, design education, and research that affects the interior environment.
The design studio is at the core of your educational experience at Pratt. It is a creative space and a community in microcosm, from which we connect to the larger design community. We believe education takes place in the studio and the classroom and that the work in the studio benefits the student’s growth equally. Working with tools and materials in the studio deepens knowledge of the opportunities inherent in form-making and design exploration.
Maker Spaces and Labs
Sustainability and material exploration drive our passion for making. We are hands-on and immersive; any student of design can discover, iterate and refine their investigations through our many labs. Learn more
Thesis
The Senior year spring semester design studio is devoted entirely to the development of a major design project: the Senior Design Thesis – a full semester of work on a self‐initiated project based on a strong sense of professionalism and design maturity. The thesis project is presented at the annual design show, a public event attended by industry leaders and potential employers. See Pratt Shows 2023.
Study Abroad
Immersing yourself in another culture is an incredible experience that can extend the boundaries of creativity. Study abroad programs are an integral part of the college experience, and Pratt has deep connections with university partners around the world. Junior year students have the opportunity to spend the spring semester at DIS in Copenhagen, Denmark. Many exchange and study abroad options, including the Custom Semester program for juniors, are available to Interior Design students. See where you can go.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of design critical to address the plurality and complexity of the environments in which we operate. Learn more.
Our Faculty
Our faculty are practitioners of interior design, architecture, industrial design, lighting design, furniture design, and communications design. They run or work for some of the most exciting and successful design firms in the world. All faculty have extensive experience working at the scale of the interior, and their expertise and abiding interests are brought to bear upon the coursework.
Interior design alumni have risen to the tops of their fields in affordable housing, community economic development, transportation, government, community development and advanced research.
Thinking seriously about Pratt? Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
Building your portfolio can be daunting. We’ll answer your questions and help you feel confident about the portfolio you submit with your application. Start building your portfolio, now.
Find yourself at home at Pratt: our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighbors. Check us out.
Tong Zhao, MFA’25
Projected Shadow
Explores how light and shadow influence our senses and deepen emotional connections to space. Through the design of a library and meditation area, it fosters mindfulness and reflection. The project also investigates how shifting perspectives of light and shadow create visual anomalies, challenging perceptions of depth and form.
Thesis advisor: Frederic Levrat
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Charis (Jian Nuo) Tang, MFA’25
Unpacking Memories: Suitcase Circuit in Capsule Journeys
A Scattered City Guide
Via the context of a travel journey, this thesis maps the archival, layered narrative of memory; a non-chronological, compressed collage of sensory experiences, grafted into the present. Scattered across the city, memorial capsules allow visitors to collect tangible site-specific artifacts, capturing the ephemeral essence of experience.
Thesis advisor: Nina Freedman
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Ying-Ching (Jin) Liao, BFA’25
Moving Night Market proposes that by installing platform safety farriers at the Court Square and Flushing stations on New York's 7 line, an opportunity to integrate small food stands between doors. Operated by local businesses, these stalls give riders a sample of the cultural experience available in the surrounding neighborhood.
Thesis advisor: Alexander Schweder
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Audrey Li, BFA’25
Tactile Futures: Craft, Sustainability, and the Afterlife of Marine Plastics
This project investigates the potential of marine plastic recycling through creative reuse and artistic expression, transforming environmental waste into handcrafted works. The collage visually constructs the spatial narrative of the interior, where distinct textures and forms symbolize different types of plastic, emphasizing their material specificity and aesthetic possibilities. Collectively, these spatial moments communicate the project’s central ambition: to bridge sustainability, craftsmanship, and public engagement through the design of immersive, interactive environments.
Thesis advisor: Rachel Paupeck
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Sara Gelber, BFA’25
Wrapping Up creates a space for the possibility of interpersonal exchange between self-sequestered Jewish and Caribbean women in Crown Heights. Building activities from shared cultural practices of head wrapping, fabrics here wrap both bodies and interiors in ways that suggest understanding might emerge from mutual experiences of gender.
Thesis advisor: Alexander Schweder
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Qiuyi Yang, BFA’25
Sonic Cruise
This thesis explores sound artists and their mobile creative processes. Four buses support music production, public interaction, and performance, forming a dynamic system of movement and collaboration. Real-time sensory feedback between sound, light, people, and space transforms mobility into both medium and message.
Thesis advisor: Sarah Lippmann
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Xiaotong (Amy) He, BFA’25
The Other Place: An Amusement Park for Temporary Escape and Identity Release
Moving through layered arcades and spaces articulated by shifting light and shadow, visitors embark on an immersive journey of temporary escape and the unbinding of identity. Castle Williams - a historic structure bearing witness to the passage of time - is re-imagined as an otherworldly amusement park that embodies themes of freedom and healing. Within this transformed environment, the relationship between self and world is gently reconstituted, offering visitors a renewed sense of orientation, agency, and possibility.
Thesis advisor: Rachel Paupeck
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Yirou Hong, MFA’25
Porous Living
-A new typology of co-living
This thesis investigates a co-living model driven by porous boundaries, focusing on the integration of privacy gradients and spatial flexibility. By experimenting with threshold strategies and adaptive spatial configurations, it aims to propose a co-living prototype within a historic industrial context, fostering a dynamic balance between privacy and flexibility in design.
Thesis advisor: Ji Young Kim
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Sophia Jui Hsuan Chen, MFA’25
Where We Belong
Connection is a fundamental human need, shaping how we engage with materials, communities, and nature. This thesis sees interior design as a catalyst to restore connection through making, movement, and immersion - redefining material use, fostering interaction, and rekindling our bond with nature through active, sustainable experience.
Thesis advisor: Stefanie Werner
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BFA students at Pratt study interior design as an integral element of the built environment by generating creative solutions that integrate an understanding of light and color, craft and making, material research, evolving technologies, sustainable practice, and social responsibility, including knowledge about global cultural histories and diverse contexts. The program prepares students to engage in critical inquiry that establishes them as innovators and leaders in the field of interior design, expanding the potential of professional practice, design education, and research affecting the interior environment.
Students begin their study of interior design in the sophomore year upon completion of a required year in Foundation. As the curriculum proceeds, interior design projects become more complex. The structure of the 126-credit program prepares graduates for a leadership role in an established profession.
Interested BFA students may apply to spend the spring term of the junior year at the Danish International School (DIS), studying interior architecture in Copenhagen. The program at DIS includes extensive study tours throughout Scandinavia. Individuals interested in transferring to Pratt from other institutions are also encouraged to apply.
To support our commitment to technological excellence, personal laptop computers are required for all undergraduate students.
Students are able to engage in analysis, research, and application of the fundamentals of human behavior.
Students are able to research, analyze, and integrate light, color, and materiality as essential design elements and principles.
Students are able to visually present and communicate their intentions through appropriate media.
Students are able to present their own work through oral and written formats.
Students are able to analyze and integrate knowledge of historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Students are able to research, identify, and evaluate constraints, rules, codes and conventions that govern the built environment.
Students are able to identify and integrate principles of human and environmental health.
Students will be prepared to work collaboratively and in multidisciplinary environments.
