Interior and Furniture Design
July 29, 2024 2024-10-09 8:11Interior and Furniture Design
About the department
Address: Department of Interior and Furniture Design, Faculty of Forest Industry, 10 Kliment Ohridski Blvd., University of Forestry, 1797 Sofia, Bulgaria
Location: Administration – Building A, 4th floor, office 437
Head of Department: Vassil Jivkov, Prof. PhD
Quality assurance: Ralitsa Simeonova, Sen. Assist. Prof. PhD
Organizing Aid for Study Activities: Nadezhda Konstantinova Simeonova – Building A, 4th floor, office 437
“Interior and Furniture Design” is a key department of the Forest Industry Faculty. The teaching staff includes architects, artists, engineer-designers, and engineers, and the department offers more than 30 disciplines covering a wide range of student education. The Department is a leader in the Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design) Program, where many disciplines are provided, mainly those that constitute the professional skills of future interior and furniture designers, structural engineers, managers, etc.
HISTORY of the Department
The establishment of Dpt. Interior and Furniture Design was made possible by several objective prerequisites, among them changes in the demographic conditions during the years of transition, residential architecture and individual requirements of residents. They brought about the need of qualified designers in interior and furniture. Furniture companies were established with flexible technology, allowing designing solutions for the interior.
The foundations of the Engineering Design Program at the University of Forestry were laid in 1989. Using an existing post-graduate program, a group of teachers developed a new full-time 5-year Master’s program in Interior Design. In the autumn of 1994, at the Ministry of Education and Science was submitted the Study Documentation of a Master Program in Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design), and the first student cohort was accepted for the 1995/1996 academic year. Teachers from the Faculty of Forest Industry, as well as the National Art Academy, the Technical University in Sofia, etc., were invited to teach.
The Department of “Interior and Furniture Design” was established in 1998 to respond to the specific requirements of the new program. Today, it is one of the basic organisational units of the Faculty with the greatest number of courses and is a major factor in the Engineering Design Program. After the Department’s creation, the Heads of the Department were Georgi Kyuchukov, Prof. PhD, Georgi Abrashev, Prof. PhD, Regina Raycheva, Prof. PhD, Assia Marinova, Prof. PhD, and from March 2020 till present – Vassil Jivkov, Prof. PhD.
In the past years, the Engineering Design program was established internationally among analogic programs in other HEI-s in Bulgaria and abroad. In 2005, the organised student workshop implemented, under the framework of an Erasmus Intensive Program, successful coordination of 6 HEI-s from all over Europe, and together with Prodes company, a representative of Häfele in Bulgaria, demonstrated the enthusiasm and willingness of the staff to develop new Design teaching methods.
In the country, designers who graduated from the Bachelor and Master Programs showed a considerable advantage over other similar programs. Apart from being excellent designers, they demonstrate deep knowledge in the area of wood and wooden materials, their properties, strength and deformational behaviour. The key knowledge turned out to be the knowledge of manufacturing processes that gave them an advantage over other competing specialists. A convincing proof of the excellent education at the University of Forestry alumni has been the numerous participations in design forums and competitions, where they won frequent prizes.
A special role was assigned to link the Department under the Erasmus+ Program with foreign HEI-s. Prof. Regina Raycheva, in her quality as Institutional Erasmus+ Coordinator for the University of Forestry, did her best to encourage Department members and other teachers, together with students, to participate in teaching mobilities and Intensive programs at partner universities. This took place in countries, such as Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Finland, Spain and Bulgaria. Each year, two or three Design students take an Erasmus Semester at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria.
The department has a number of specialized laboratories. Among them are:
Academic staff
At present, the academic staff of the Department of Interior and Furniture Design consists of the following colleagues:
Study process, disciplines and teachers
The teachers of the department are highly qualified and established specialists – designers, architects, constructors and planners. Since its establishment, a total of 17 doctoral students have been trained in the department in full-time or part-time, and 9 of them defended their dissertations and were awarded the educational and scientific degree “doctor” – Miroslava Petrova, Desislava Angelova, Maria Marinova – Kokorska , Alexandrina Parvanova, Ralitsa Simeonova, Krasimir Savchev and Pavlina Vodenova. From 2019, there are three new doctoral students in the department: Boryana Petrova, Ralitsa Stavreva and Maria Kichukova. Ralitsa Stavreva and Boryana Petrova successfully defended in 2022. From 2021, Maya Ivanova became a full-time doctoral student, who was dismissed with the right to defend in 2024. From 2023, in the department for enrolled Eng.-Diz. Tsvetan Stoykov – full-time doctoral student, arch. Yavor Makiov – part-time doctoral student and engineer-dis. Silvena Todorova – part-time doctoral student. From 2024, there are three new doctoral students in the department: Eng.-Diz. Jessica-Alexandra Tujarova – full-time doctoral student, assistant professor Vanina Tabakova – part-time doctoral student and assistant professor Carmela Lombardi – part-time doctoral student.
The IDM Department provides the teaching of a very large number of study subjects from the study plans of the “Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design)” specialty, “Bachelor” and “Master” OCS, and several study subjects for the “Wood and Furniture Technology” specialty – “Interior architecture” for the Bachelor’s degree program and the disciplines “Systems and mechanisms in furniture, interior and wooden structures” and “Furniture dimensioning” for the Master’s degree program and for the “Computer technologies in the furniture industry” specialty – “Non-wood materials in the interior” ‘, ‘Computer Animation and Virtual Reality’, ‘Furniture Design’, ‘Interior Architecture’ and ‘Computer-Aided Furniture Design’.
l. Bachelor Program, Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design)
II. Bachelor Program, Wood and Furniture Technology
ІІІ. Bachelor Program “Computer technologies in the furniture industry”
The lecturers of the department actively participate in complex practice on “Furniture Construction”, “Furniture Technology” and “Construction wood products in the interior” in the VI semester of the study and in the current practices on “Non-wood materials in the interior”, “Styles in the interior and furniture”, “Design of residential interior and furniture” and “Design of public furniture”.
IV. Master Program in Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design)
Lecturers and staff from the Department have taught at different foreign universities in Austria, Germany, the Republic of North Macedonia, Slovakia, Scotland etc., as well as invited to lecture at a number of Bulgarian HEI-s – UACG, NBU, NAA, VSU, EPU Pernik, etc. Department staff has also serious results in their artistic and creative activities, prizes, individual expositions, participation at prestigious expositions at home and abroad, etc.
Staff with academic rank and assistants with a PhD from Department IFD tutor a great part of diploma students of the Engineering Design Bachelor or Master Program, as well as part of Technology of Wood and Furniture Bachelor or Master Programs. All staff of academic rank participates in State Examination Committee for Diploma Presentations at both Bachelor and Master Programs at the Faculty of Forest Industry.
Scientific projects:
Scientific Areas of Department Staff
The Interior and Furniture Design Department is a major unit. Its staff are among the leading specialists in their areas of science, with numerous publications and citations in renowned scientific reviews both in Bulgaria and abroad. They are regular participants in international science forums and members of international science teams. They have multi-faceted science interests and are professionals in various areas.
These are the scientific directions of their research:
Science and infrastructure projects
Members of the department have participated in the development of a number of international and national research and infrastructure projects:
Patents
Members of the Department staff have developed and registered several patents:
The active scientific work of the lecturers of the department and the creation of utility models and inventions as a final result is carried out in the laboratory of furniture construction, where the foundations of the rational construction and dimensioning of furniture in our country are laid by applying original experimental-theoretical methods for testing and establishing the strength and deformation characteristics of the angular joints of their structural elements, which are applied in the deformation and strength study of furniture structures with computer programs developed using the finite element method.
The IDM Department works in close cooperation with the Branch Chamber of Woodworking and Furniture Industry, interior and architectural studios, and prominent designers from practice, such as Ilian Milinov, Svetoslav Todorov, Lachezar Tsvetanov and others, which helps the students of the speciality “Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design)” to gain more practical knowledge and experience, and the business – to meet their future colleagues and use their innovative ideas.
