Call for applications: Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design

In the field of design, overlapping theoretical and practical knowledge offer a unique perspective into how we consider the present and speculate on possible futures. The Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design is committed to the most innovative methodologies of research, both from and with design, offering transdisciplinary training that responds to the growing demand for professionals who are capable of working in open, collaborative processes with a forward-looking and transformative vocation.

This Master’s Degree, which combines theory and practice, is structured as a sequence of subjects that provide us with scenarios, arguments and specific questions to work on. With guidance through each subject from outstanding lecturers and professionals, perspectives are added organically and skills, knowledge and tools are progressively acquired from experimental and collaborative environments such as Medialabs, Fablabs and artistic creation workshops, along with research methods from the arts, social sciences, science and technology studies, as well as cultural, decolonial and feminist studies. This Master’s Degree does not recognise research without experimentation; concern for the political without concern for the sensitive; or theory without technical imagination, material experimentation and aesthetics.

In its field, the Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design is notable for its professionalising focus and, at the same time, providing the research tools that are required to allow students to subsequently enter into doctoral programmes. This Master’s Degree is a one year course and is worth 60 ECTS credits, the total that is required to register for a doctoral thesis.

The main objectives of this course are focused on training professionals in a way that enables them to develop design projects that will result in the sustainable transformation of the environments in which we live from a critical and grounded standpoint; projects that are always based on strict research processes and guided by material, technological and conceptual experimentation. Students will gain knowledge of various research methods, learn to use manufacturing and digital prototyping tools, and explore the frameworks of contemporary thought to enable them to devise high-level personal projects. Inspired by free culture and open design, the professional practice we propose is specifically aimed at heterogeneous, multi-disciplinary and collaborative work contexts.

Programme

Subject I—Strategies and Policies of Design
Fiction, Critical and Speculative Design
Social Innovation and Collaborative Design

Subject II—The Social Life of Things
Material Cultures and Design Ecologies
Design, Power and Society

Subject III—Methodologies of Art Research
Research in art and design

Subject IV—Experimental Methods
Investigating with data
Ethnographies and design

Subject V—Design and Manufacture of Projects
Manufacturing and prototyping

Subject VI—Design Work Tools
Design and Numerical Control
Digital Design
Internship

Subject VII—Final Project (TFM)

Faculty: Lúa Coderch (Coordinator), Blanca Callén, Nizaiá Cassián, Mariona Genís, Daniel López, Josian Llorente, Teresa Martínez, Rubén Martínez, María Fernanda Moscoso, Jaron Rowan, Roger Sansi, Susanna Tesconi.

Guest contributors 2017/18: Elisenda Ardévol, Carles Baiges, Laura Benítez, Julia R. Blanco, Carla Boserman, Mauro Castro, Pau Cata, Péter Dunajcsik, Lucía Egaña, Laia Forné Aguirre, Matteo Guidi, Alicia Kopf, Debora Lanzeni, Camila Maggi, Colectivo MAKEA, Joan Maroto, Mar Medina, Rosa Pera, Blanca Pujals, Jara Rocha, Irene Sabaté.

More information is available here.

The call for applications for the 2018 Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design will be open until mid-September.

Apply here.