Casson speaks up in RCA debate

Unrest over developments at the Royal College of Art’s Architecture course has led former course head Dinah Casson to remark that interior designers ‘now have nowhere to go’.

The comments, published in tomorrow’s Design Week, follow news that a letter is being circulated among alumni of the former Architecture and Interiors postgraduate degree, expressing concern about the downgrading of the interior design discipline.

Casson, a director of exhibition design specialist Casson Mann, was course leader for two years, from 1993 to 1995, when she amalgamated the distinct Architecture and Interior Design courses into one entity. She was succeeded by current leader Nigel Coates, who renamed the course Architecture in 2005.

Also commenting on developments at the RCA course, Coates says, ‘I believe in the interweaving of [architecture and interiors] and that is what we teach. The course as I inherited it was conventional in so far as it maintained them as separate mindsets. This needed jacking up.’