Integrated Project Work

The capstone appraisal course, where a student takes the project designed in the comprehensive studio and proves it — writing a project feasibility report that integrates the knowledge and skills of the whole degree and tests, honestly and across five lenses, whether the design is viable in the real world. It teaches that transforming a concept into a real product is an act of integration and of responsibility, and that a design is not finished when it is presented but when it is proven feasible, buildable, affordable, responsible, compliant and worth building. It begins with what feasibility is and why it matters, the transformation of a concept into a product, the integration of everything learned into one holistic assessment, and the professional duties and liabilities the interior designer carries, because a signed drawing is a promise. It appraises the project environmentally, treating the building as a consumer of resources and a producer of waste whose impact must be assessed at every scale, and noting that formal environmental clearance under the EIA Notification is legally triggered for large projects of twenty thousand square metres and above while the discipline of assessing impact applies to any project, and socio-economically, asking who the design serves and at what value, weighing different user groups, behaviour, security, aesthetics and the equity of cost. It tests technical feasibility, the blunt question of whether the design can actually be built and serviced, through the execution and detailing of spaces and elements and the checking that the layout works for the service systems and the specifications. It costs the project honestly, measuring a bill of quantities, pricing it by a schedule of rates such as the CPWD schedule with a contingency, showing a cost as a range rather than a single certain number, and distinguishing economic viability, whether the project uses resources well, from financial viability, whether it pays back. And it checks the space-planning and compliance gates, whether the layout supports real user activity, and whether the design passes accessibility, fire safety, services and green rating, insisting that these are gates a design must pass to be feasible and not add-ons checked at the end, with India's model code the National Building Construction Standards, the Harmonised Guidelines governing universal accessibility, and green rating through GRIHA or IGBC appraising a sustainability it does not by itself guarantee. It ends in a verdict, whether across all five lenses the project should go ahead, be revised, or not, and in the understanding that this honest, integrated appraisal is what turns a design into a real, responsible, buildable project.