COOP Design Research MSc

Call for applications—COOP Design Research MSc, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with Bauhaus Foundation Dessau. Applications for fall term 2026 open until May 15, 2026 (rolling admissions).

What constitutes the knowledge cultures of design? How have designers’ concepts of knowledge changed, and what are the consequences? Is designing a research activity, and how do designers “do” research? 

The one-year COOP Design Research MSc integrates design and research as transdisciplinary fields at the intersection of design anthropology, material culture studies, architecture and design research, history and theory, as well as social sciences. The program critically engages with current concerns in design studies and architectural research, departing from the multiple modern legacies unfolding around the Bauhaus, as design's status as a clearly defined discipline has been challenged along with the notion of its power to shape an anthropocentric environment. 

The program offers a learning space for reflecting and diffracting design’s theoretical and practical frameworks, the hegemonic ideologies and radical epistemological shifts affecting the practices of designers and architects, as well as the consequences for the environment and the earth. 

COOP Design Research MSc is a collaborative program offered by the departments of Architecture and Design at Hochschule Anhalt and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, in cooperation with Humboldt University Berlin (Research Cluster Matters of Activity / Department of Cultural History and Theory). The main study location is the Bauhaus building in Dessau-Roßlau. Courses and thesis supervision are jointly provided by professors and lecturers affiliated with the three institutions as well as international guests. 

The Bauhaus building, its archives, museum, artefacts and legacies offer a highly suitable vantage point for a contemporary critical inquiry into concepts and notions of design and its theoretical and historical roots in modernity.

Situating critical research and learning at the Bauhaus in Dessau today, the program explores how to question hegemonic paradigms of design, and how alternative architectural and design historiographies emerge from diverse trans-cultural resonances and conversations. Instead of linear narratives, we ask how stories of interconnected entanglements and ecologies can be told otherwise. Modes of co-production and co-habitation come into view, that already co-existed within the dominant narratives of design in industrial modernity. 

Engaging with these questions, the program not only draws on the knowledge assembled by the sites, collections and scholarship of the Bauhaus and the partner institutions, but also on the city and the region as special reservoirs of knowledge on industrial and “post-industrial” transformation. Different layers of the built environment, museums and landscape tell of the search to design these transformations, manifest in everyday culture, urban space and ecologies. 

Questions about the knowledge(s) of designers and architects, their agency and context, their self-conception and ideas are materialized here in a cultural landscape where different temporalities of progress, innovation and ruination co-exist. 

The MSc program COOP Design Research thus situates itself in a complex knowledge landscape and takes it up as a learning space in various formats.

The program brings together diverse voices and perspectives, emphasizing collaborative learning and research.  Participants explore research methods in design and architecture, gain hands-on research experience, and nurture writing and communication skills to articulate their work and thinking in academic, professional, and cultural contexts. The program fosters reflexive research practice, and critical awareness, enabling participants to situate their work within design and architecture history, theory, and contemporary cultural debates.

The Master of Science degree in Design Research opens pathways in academic research and teaching and provides a foundation for potential doctoral studies. Equally, it charts avenues towards reflexive architectural and design practice, as well as for roles in the curatorial work and cultural production.

For any questions, please contact us by e-mail:  info@coopdesignresearch.de.