The split between physical and digital spaces is obsolete, as they are now intricately intertwined, influencing and impacting each other seamlessly. Our social lives occur across media, in transmedia spaces whose design and regulation nobody takes responsibility for. As we gather through multiple layers of media we merge environments and create possibilities for meaningful exchange between people globally as well as further opportunities for manipulation, inequality, and concentration of power.

The internet enabled social interaction in and around previously disconnected physical spaces and digital assets, turning the formatting of information into the shaping of unprecedented transmedia realms. As architects we have a plural understanding of the public realm that is at once experiential, practical, and legislative. How do we contribute to the shaping of emerging transmedia worlds in ways that align with values of openness, inclusivity, sustainability, and fairness?

The “MAIA Graduate Show 2025” invited visitors to explore how interior architecture can respond to shifting social, political, ecological, and technological conditions through imaginative and critical design. This year’s projects examined the intersections of care, visibility, intimacy, ritual, protest, and cohabitation, challenging traditional architectural norms and proposing alternative ways of inhabiting space through a diverse range of projects in terms of scale, typology, location, and complexity.

Spanning through various themes and formats, the projects reimagined domestic environments, public infrastructure, sacred spaces, and urban voids. They transformed table linens into tools for social connection, explored the architectural imaginary shaped by media, cinema and tourism, examined protest architectures highlighting the imaginative breadth and critical urgency of the cohort’s work, used digital analysis to address the disappearance of glaciers, reimagined the spatial politics of high-income housing in New Delhi, investigated the auditory dimension of domestic life through a case study in Geneva’s social housing, reclaimed an abandoned urban site to create an intergenerational park where play becomes an inclusive activity and reimagined one of Hong Kong’s busiest public toilets as a civic space that centers care, dignity, and visibility.