Finding escapism in domestic spaces through Interior Design

Graduate Diploma Interior Design student Morgane Sansay enjoys creating space that helps people transport away from today's societal problems. Her designs include a house influenced by the order of the Chakras and a bathroom inspired by the Cenotes in Mexico.

Before she joined Chelsea College of Arts, Morgane’s creative direction was not always clearly defined. It began with her leaving a full-time career with a large company to pursue 5 years of traveling. During this time and whilst teaching yoga and meditation, she started to realise that what she had lacked in her previous career was a connection with people.

We caught up with Morgane who told us more about her practice and her Unit 1 projects which take inspiration from her interests in yoga and travel, as well as water and coral to create calm, contemplative and balanced domestic spaces.

Can you please describe your practice?

My practice focuses on people, culture and sociology. I want to find solutions for the problems within our society and help people by creating work or spaces that transport them.

Before starting my course, I was working with photography, and enjoy capturing the atmosphere of a place or the personality of a person in an image.

Within my practice I try to be authentic and poetic, I draw and paint mostly portraits, and occasionally I like to use pastel for abstract life drawing. I like to use a lot of colour within my work so it can be absorbed as a feeling of joyfulness.

How has studying on the course evolved your practice?

Having started the Graduate Diploma Interior Design course at Chelsea College of Arts, I now experiment more with 3D. I have discovered sculpture and model making and I would like to develop this further in the future. I also discovered that I can use my 3D skills to express ideas, and it gives me more freedom to experiment in my drawings and sketches.

I find myself thinking less about what I want to create and instead just trying to create and draw to see what is coming out of my practice without any expectation. In terms of interior design, I have learnt to think outside the box, coming up with ideas that seem unrealistic at the beginning but once redefined can be really powerful.

Can you tell us more about the Unit 1 individual design project you recently completed?

Unit 1 of the course was split into 4 projects, all based on designing domestic space.

We had to choose a client that had a specific collection, who was willing to work with us until the end of the unit and would be part of a resident program. It was the first live project, whereby you are designing a space for one of the studios at Chelsea.

My client is a sculptor, but also a free diver who collects photos of coral plants. Therefore, my first project was working on developing a live workspace based on coral. I experimented using different materials, shapes and forms that could represent the world of my client.

Considering the physical space, which was small, I developed some furniture that could expend and retract like the corals during their night-time transformation.

The next part of the project was designing a ‘window of contemplation’ and this is when I started my research. This partly focused on the word sacred, not as a space, but as an emotion.

As a free diver, my client a feels peacefulness under water as though in their own sacred place. I wanted to see if I could transfer this emotion - as something out of time, with a sense of flow and connection - into interior design.

I am interested in human wellbeing and how the space around us can affect us deeply, therefore my window of contemplation was based on the underwater and the slow movement of water, to transport my client into his sacred place.

I then was required to design a bathroom, and I choose at this point to develop my concept around analysis of water rituals across the world. My final design is inspired by the Cenotes in Mexico where water represents a connection within a divine world.

My research on water rituals also showed that many share a common approach, with the idea of water being placed on the head. I therefore split my bathroom design into 2 levels, with the only window placed at the top of the bathroom to create a shower of light.

The last element I included was a representation of the cycle of life, which water is for most cultures in the world. I choose to use different opacity in material, through the cycle, going from opaque to transparent like you were going through life: from birth to death, disappearing and then starting again around the cycle.

The transparency has also a notion of purification, which is the aim of water rituals. The choice of colour used in the bathroom was really intense as I wanted something psychedelic and dreamy.

For the final part to the project, I based my concept around the Chakras, designing a home where each space represents 1 Chakra.

My aim is that, on entering these spaces, you would know to focus on a specific emotion or a specific aspect of yourself in order to find balance: a moment of peace but also a moment to express; to be alone and to be with others; to be angry, to be passionate, to dream and to feel grounded. These feelings and emotions all represent the different spaces within the Chakra house.

For the bathroom, I choose as the root chakra as it is a place you should feel grounded. Then I developed the colours, shapes, and materials that could all be associated with each chakra.

The overall design of the home is organised around a Lotus tree which represents all the stacked Chakras, and the  house is split into different levels offering different space and height. Each space flows in the order of the Chakras, with some of the space on a platform that moves around the lotus tree, allowing you to rearrange space.

I was aiming for a sustainable design, using recycled materials and innovative energy management. I also took into consideration the optimisation of space, as today we have less and less space as it gets expensive. I also considered the Covid-19 pandemic and created a space at the entrance to "decontaminate" yourself.

The outcome of the pandemic has shown that everybody wants to be able to optimise their home, so they are able to do different activities and the Chakra house, with its adaptability of space and atmosphere, allows for this.

Do you have any advice for students considering studying Graduate Diploma Interior Design?

Come in with an open mind and a will to experiment without putting too much pressure on yourself. Be confident, show your identity, your personality and you will learn a lot. Don’t be afraid of not having the background in design – what you need is ideas.

Find out more about Graduate Diploma Interior Design