Master of Arts Design X Other Species

In a context marked by inequitable climate transformations, biodiversity loss, and growing awareness of interdependence between species, design needs to change. Within transdisciplinary teams, it is a discipline capable of holding the necessary complexity to address today’s needs to adapt, mitigate and regenerate.

The Master of Arts Design X Other Species at IED Milano responds to this context and proposes a specific program with a faculty whose teaching explores new ways of perceiving, narrating, and designing relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. (Watch the video here)

Bringing together designers, researchers, artists, writers, anthropologists and ecologists, the program proposes a shift from human-centered design toward an eco-centric and multispecies perspective.

Designer, researcher and the course coordinator Eugenia Morpurgo brings a regenerative perspective to material culture. Her course, Regenerative Design, explores how design can contribute to conserving and regenerating complex ecologies, based on locality and long-term ecological responsibility. “We will learn how to deconstruct colonial extractive systems, and we will attempt to rebuild local design practices rooted in care”, says Morpurgo.

For Angela Rui, design curator and Scientific Lead of Design at IED, designing for other species means recognizing that humans, plants, animals, and ecosystems share the same interconnected environment. Through her course Design for the Pluriverse, students experiment with new ways of sensing and understanding the world, moving “from a culture that looks at objects to one that looks at more-than-human subjects” and developing tools to imagine design beyond exclusively human concerns.

“One of the first solutions to be implemented now are group acting and group being; collectively thinking and putting ideas together”, explains writer, curator, and educator Barbara Casavecchia. In her course Critical Writing, she invites students to question dominant ways of thinking and to reconsider the assumption that the human perspective is unique. For Casavecchia, editor in chief at Mousse Magazine, responding to contemporary challenges requires forms of collective knowledge based in exchange, collaboration, and shared research.

Architect and visual designer Michele Marchetti, founder of Display and co-founder of San Rocco Magazine and Salottobuono, focuses on emerging tools that allow us to perceive non-human worlds in unprecedented ways. “Why is it important? Because finally we have tools like digital imaging and bioacoustics to actually perceive and represent the non-human world in depth”. In Other-than-Human Dramaturgies, students work with soundscapes, cinema, and digital media to develop narratives that decenter human experience and explore alternative modes of perception.

The program extends beyond the classroom. IED will host an immersive workshop at Villa Asquer, a 23-hectare park near Cagliari, Sardinia, where students will experiment with methods for listening to, sensing, and collaborating with more-than-human realities. Through botany, art practice, craft, and site-based observation, the participants will test firsthand the ecological and transdisciplinary approach at the heart of the Master.

Scientific Coordinators: Eugenia Morpurgo / Faculty: Bennett Bazalgette Staples, Giovanni Bellotti e Alessandra Covini (Studio Ossidiana), Nicola Brambilla, Francesco Bratos, Barbara Casavecchia, Debora Hirsch, Michael Kaethler, Michele Marchetti, Alessandro Masserdotti (Dotdotdot), Angelo Renna, Angela Rui, Giuditta Vendrame. / Language: English / Duration: Two years.

Issued degree: Diploma Accademico di Secondo Livello (DASL), corresponding to a Master of Arts Degree (MA)—EQF7 Level (European Qualification Framework). The course awards 120 CFA (Academic Formative Credits), corresponding to 120 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System).

For further information and application details contact Sofia Pavesi Abliassova—s.pavesiabliassova@ied.it.

For content or pedagogical related questions contact the coordinator Eugenia Morpurgo at e.morpurgo@ied.edu or Veronica Ferrari at v.ferrari@ied.it.