The turn of the twenty-first century is witnessed extremely fast changes occurring in the interior design profession outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries by the dominance of information technologies that invites more complex design problems resulting in new design methodologies. Therefore, interior design is experimenting with significant changes outside the traditional disciplinary boundaries, where new terms, concepts, and vocabulary emerged replacing simplicity and clarity. Paradoxically, interior design graduates struggle to shift successfully from academic study to the interior design professional practice as they are not used on collaborative work in their study which is the nature of the interior design practice. Responding to these challenges needs to develop a design studio paradigm to improve our programs and the quality of education by creating curricula, syllabi, and teaching materials encouraging an inventive and collaborative design work that enable interior design students to develop the skills needed for their future professional practice. According to the Professional Relations Directorate at Ahlia University, career opportunities for interior design students were looking relatively negative, 62.96% of interior design graduates in 2018 were unemployed. Accordingly, this research describes and evaluate the vertical studio approach which allows students from various levels and skills to collaborate on a design project to create an innovative design that prepares them to the changing needs in the market for the 21st century, it is also believed that this model will be relevant to all design disciplines. The findings of this research show that vertical design studio has a strong potential in the high quality of the students' design projects and recommends applying this paradigm in the interior design department at Ahlia University and other design schools in Bahrain.

Recently, the persistent problem in art and design programs in Worldwide universities are visual plagiarism. The main core values of academic institutions in general and Ahlia University is to produce graduates with not only good knowledge but also good values and high academic reputation that encourages intellectual and moral development promoting the image of their universities. Therefore, Ahlia university invests its efforts to create policies and procedures for text-based assignments to control originality of students’ work while handing in assignments, reports, research proposals, and dissertations by using software technology like Turnitin. Conversely, little has been done focused on non-textual materials in art and design education. Besides, there are a plethora of articles when searching the Scopus database, about text-based academic misconduct with a dearth of research devoted to visual plagiarism which often left to the experience of academic faculty. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to shed light on students’ understanding of visual plagiarism issues and bridge the gap in visual work. Moreover, this research will develop a pedagogical policy that can be used by faculty to control academic dishonesty in visual arts. This research is conducting using two main methods. Firstly, it depended on reviewing different literature from journals, articles, and policies from different universities about plagiarism. Secondly, this research used qualitative and quantitative data. To collect qualitative data, an in-depth interview with the 15 academicians was conducted to triangulate with the students' findings of reasons of visual plagiarism and prevention solutions. For the quantitative data, an online survey using the Google form survey was used to a sample of 54 students in the design program at Ahlia University and other universities in Bahrain. Finally, this research reveals that the lack of awareness among students in arts and design education about academic integrity leads to visual plagiarism.

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Sustainable technologies and green design practices all over the world have a vital role on architectural practices by reducing building impacts on human health and the environment and contribute positively to the ecosystem. Factors call for improved environmental design are population growth, which increases the built up area in cities and reduce the green open spaces, high percentage of air and water pollution due to industrialization, global warming, loss of habitat and biodiversity, and increasing urban heat island (UHI). Consequently, a new approach is needed to alleviate these problems; one of these approaches is green roofs which recognized as an effective sustainable design tool that soften the harsh urban environment. Green roofs or the so called 'fifth facade' have had diverse environmental benefits such as improving the surrounding environment, insulation properties, purifying the air pollutants through the foliage which absorb dust particles, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants, building energy saving, it also presents the correlation between a green rooftop and improving micro-climate for both individual buildings and neighborhood. In addition, green rooftops provide a visual interesting layer with plenty texture and color instead of uncovered roof. Generally, the results verified that green-roof enhance building microclimate, conserve energy, increase occupants' comfort and health, and compensates for the green-space deficit in cities.

The main role of building is to provide shelter, security and healthy place for its occupants. As people spend most of their time in indoor space (home, work, schools, etc.) therefore most of the hazards that affect human health is a result of poor indoor environment. Among many factors contribute to unhealthy indoor environment and affect people' health are lack of maintenance, indoor air quality (IAQ) as a result of poor of ventilation, light, noise, etc. Nowadays, architects, and interior designers main objective is to promote comfort and healthy indoor building environment for its occupants through the design process of new building and provide proper design solutions for existing buildings. Therefore, the aim of this research is identify active factors related health that affect the indoor building environment. Strategies and recommendations to prevent or minimize hazards due to poor indoor environment will be also addressed.