Meg Brown

About Meg Brown 

I’m from a farm on the South Coast and have always loved making things, especially crocheting. My mum collects and sells antiques as a retail business, so my childhood was curated with all things old, and I was raised with a real awareness of and love for space making and design. 

I am in my third year of a Bachelor of Design in Interior Architecture and hope to extend my degree with a semester abroad. 

Why Interior Architecture? 

Although torn between the decision to study architecture or interior architecture, I have always been mostly attracted towards interior spatial condition making and curatorship. Exterior appearance and form, personally, doesn’t excite me as much as the study of interior experience and the capacity for space to make us feel a certain way. My interest in architecture was essentially motivated at the scale and choreography of the body. 

I think the most valuable thing I have been taught while studying interior architecture is not what to think necessarily, rather how to think about architecture through a multitude of spatial lenses. As a discipline of spatial condition making, interior architectural practice is not exclusive to the interior experience but an incredibly flexible way of thinking and perceiving design from the body’s perspective. This body can be human, non-human, ecological or inanimate and works through a concentrated choreography of first-person sensory perception. We don’t deal with paint samples, curtains, cushions, or aesthetic preference, but rather approach interior space as an atmospheric condition made up of sensorial relationships. The way the body reads these conditions informs how we experience the interior and feel about the rituals, behaviours, or activities at task. 

Why UTS? 

When researching undergraduate opportunities for architecture in Australia, I was attracted to the interior discipline offered at UTS. This decision was academically driven, but having Sydney CBD as my backyard was an added bonus! It’s a very unique style campus, sort of like a concrete jungle, and Sydney city becomes your home and playground - especially if you plan to live on campus. 

Global Study 

I travelled to Seoul, Korea for a global study tour. The tour was focused on understanding how Seoul, as a mega-city, functions through islands and mega-structures. Our days were very packed with lots to see and think about, guided through a flexible theoretical framework of our own architectural disciplines. I learned how to read architecture in a very metropolitan context, beyond monuments of the built environment but also through the intimate experiences between people and the city. 

It's so beneficial to study outside of the classroom and gain the independence and awareness to interpret architecture by living and experiencing it. I think by being guided from benign to monumental moments of architecture in such a vast city like Seoul, I came to understand that design is not something controlled but lived and experienced by real people. I observed the way that Seoul depends on interior space as refuge from the globalised effect and the density of the facade and realised the relevance of interior architecture in the built environment. 

We were also lucky enough to visit leading architectural firms in Seoul such as Iroje, Mass Studies, PRAUD and KCAP, and I even took the opportunity to keep travelling and explore further south outside of Seoul after the study portion of the trip. 

What’s next?

This is definitely only the beginning of my study journey! 

I am interested in so many different facets of architecture and design. I am fascinated by the threshold between interior and exterior, and the ability to control atmospheric condition making in landscape design and architecture. My initial love is held for heritage architecture and antique curatorship although my global study trip to Seoul sparked an excitement in the possibilities of travel opportunities through a pathway of research. Essentially, I’m not certain where my interests will take me before postgraduate study, though I am very excited to explore within and beyond the bounds of interior architecture!