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.
Aditi Singh, MFA’25
POROUS POLY-VALENCE
This thesis investigates how the generational gap can be bridged in community spaces by harnessing gentelligence through spatial strategies of layered porosity and creating polyvalent systems that foster low-stakes, organic engagement across ages.
Thesis advisor: Alper Besen
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Yumeng Li, BFA’25
Threads
This thesis creates a supportive environment for adults with autism, where minor daily accomplishments accumulate through repetition. Individual actions in baking, farming, and painting transform into community contributions as outcomes are shared and exhibited. The threads, the daily exchanges between the public and the community, intertwine to build an increasingly strong collective.
Thesis advisor: William McLoughlin
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Rachana Shyam Rao, MFA’25
Hybridity : Crafting Dining Experiences that Transcend Boundaries
This project embraces identity as an evolving tapestry, shaped by the present and enriched through cultural experiences. Through layered spatial and ornamental design, it evokes a porous, immersive dining landscape where boundaries dissolve, traditions intertwine, and guests are invited into a sensorial dialogue that transcends singular cultural narratives.
Thesis advisor: Alper Besen
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Denise Turati, MFA’25
Meeting Grounds:Designing for Connection
Meeting Grounds explores how new opportunities for romantic connection can be fostered through spatial choreography - using gradients of intimacy, flirtatious gestures, and the ambient presence of the “inherent third person” to support social encounter and emotional resonance.
Thesis advisor: Alper Besen
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Asia Mackenzie Chung, MFA’25
The Vernacular Interior: Re-defining and re-claiming a post-colonial Caribbean identity
Through the exploration of material, sustainability, pattern, ornament, textiles, and surface, a proposition for introducing a vernacular language into the interior enables users to reimagine identity within a cultural diaspora.
Thesis advisor: Edwin Zawadzki
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Enlin Xiao, MFA’25
Ma (間): The exploration of spiritual and spatial void
Building upon the Japanese concept of Ma (間)—the intentional use of emptiness, intervals, and spatial harmony, spiritual and spatial void can be bridged to explore an interior space that enhances presence and promotes inner peace.
間
Thesis advisor: Edwin Zawadzki
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Jean (Ching-Wen) Juan, MFA’25
‘Columbarium’: Fracture Threshold
This thesis explores the processing of life’s transition through the act of retaining and relinquishing. Framed within the language of a columbarium memorial; an earth fissure evokes reflection, release, and renewal.
Thesis advisor: Nina Freedman
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Runxuan Zhao, MFA’25
INTERTWINED REALMS
-Pets friendly Co-working space
This thesis examines the psychological stress and loneliness experienced by urban young adults, focusing on the therapeutic role of human-pet relationships through the built environment. It proposes the design of a pet-inclusive co-working space as an intervention to enhance emotional resilience in contemporary urban life.
Thesis advisor: Ji Young Kim
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Gwendolyn Nace, BFA’25
You ache like this and no river can help fix it
How can a heightened sensitivity towards abandoned interior space build out
a framework - a map, a diagram of veins - for questioning those sites of decay
that have been left to us?
Carrie Blast Furnace is a vestige of Pittsburgh’s former domination of the steel
industry. Analyzing the industrial ruins as they remain, and re-imagining traces
previously undocumented, this project foregrounds the charged associations of
human and environmental contact borne by and embedded in the site.
A system of arteries is mapped onto the factory’s remaining networks leading
to the blast furnace - once a site of rapid combustion and iron production, now
an empty shell. Modeled after the arteries of the uterus, the veins inserted in-
side the blast furnace’s existing framework prompt a reconsideration of the industrial ruins in relation to the human body.
A new way of engaging with the industrial heritage site, this body of research
and reflection weaves in and around existing archival documentation - preserving, modifying, supplementing to blur the boundaries between fact and memory and link visceral feeling to observed factory anatomy.
Thesis advisor: Melissa Cicetti
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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.
