PROGRAMME
The TRESDA programme is composed of three meticulously constructed courses, designed to be taken in sequence and held to a shared standard of rigor.
Each course operates as a controlled environment rather than an open brief. Conditions are deliberately set, constraints are maintained, and progression is measured through clarity, responsibility, and coherence rather than volume of output. What is introduced at earlier stages is not discarded, but carried forward.
Together, the programme forms a disciplined progression from self-orientation to public accountability. The aim is not stylistic development, but the cultivation of practitioners capable of making decisions that can be read, tested, and sustained beyond the individual.
001 SELF
Format
Online · Self-paced
Focus
Learning how to locate yourself before you design anything at all.
In 001, you work with a fixed living room floor plan to translate your references, memories, instincts and assumptions into space. The work is not about style, but about recognising how identity already shapes decision-making.
What you’ll do
Work with a fixed living room floor plan to translate your own position into space.
You will examine personal references, lived experiences, instincts, and assumptions, and make them legible through spatial decisions. Using mood and rendered views, the work focuses on how identity already operates within form — often unconsciously — and how that can be clarified rather than stylised.
The outcome is a living room that functions as a spatial articulation of Self, where decisions are made visible and accountable.
Deliverables
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1 living room moodboard
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4 rendered views
Who it’s for
Suitable for beginners. No prior visualisation software experience required.
Minimum SOS
S__ / 10
002 OTHER
Format
Online · Self-paced
Focus
Learning how to design without centring yourself.
In 002, you return to the same living room floor plan, this time designing for someone else. You work with difference, context and use that cannot be authored from within and learn how to negotiate between your own instincts and another person’s reality.
What you’ll do
Rework the same living room floor plan in response to another person.
You will design for someone beyond yourself, engaging with their needs, context, and use.
The task is not to replicate preference, but to interpret difference and negotiate responsibility through spatial decisions.
Through mood and rendered views, the living room becomes a site where Self and Other are held in tension, and where interpretation replaces projection.
Deliverables
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1 living room moodboard
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4 rendered views
Who it’s for
Designed to build directly on 001. Still accessible to beginners.
Minimum SOS
SO_ / 20
003 SYNTHESIS
Format
In-person · Residency-style
Autumn/Winter · Spring/Summer
Focus
The culmination of Self and Other.
003 brings together personal position and external responsibility through collaborative work. Participants operate within small cohorts, working alongside four other individuals to develop a shared spatial proposition.
Through dialogue, negotiation, and collective decision-making, the work produced exemplifies SOS in its entirety — Self understood, Other engaged, and Synthesis made legible through form. The emphasis is not individual expression, but coherence achieved under shared conditions.
What you’ll do
Design and realise a full-scale living room as an erected, four-walled spatial proposition.
The project is developed as a professional brief rather than an academic exercise. Participants work under mentorship from industry leaders and in collaboration with seasonal partners, whose materials, products, or systems inform the spatial decisions made within the room.
The living room is conceived, detailed, and resolved as a complete environment, then presented publicly as part of The Defence, situating the work within a cultural, institutional, and professional frame.
Deliverables
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Exhibition-ready spatial proposal
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Public presentation as part of The Defense
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Archival documentation
Entry
Selective. Completion of 001 and 002 required.
Minimum SOS
≥20/30 to enter · ≥25/30 to complete
Completion of each course is formally certified and recorded within TRESDA’s certification ledger.
The ledger functions as an institutional record of work completed under the programme’s conditions.