Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design

Throughout the two-year Master Contextual Design course we try to increase the students’ awareness of how each manmade thing, and each designed strategy, is a node in a network of relationships with other people, things, contexts. Questions are asked such as ‘which experiences are invited by this particular design’, ‘which morality hides in its aesthetics’, ‘which views on people’s vulnerability, craziness, spiritual and intellectual power are mirrored by this intervention’, and ‘what is the larger narrative implied by a design’s functionality’. To underscore the personal responsibility of the designer we speak of authorship, which is not taken in its narrow interpretation of personal ‘stardom’ or ‘signature design’, both of which are embraced by the market as seduction strategies, but the truer conception of authorship as accepting ‘ownership’ and working from genuine commitment. Authorship implies the designer takes personal responsibility for all implicit meanings of a design, as well as the implications and consequences it carries.

At Contextual Design we consider design as a way of reflecting on the world, as a practice of cultural critique. The artistic talents and experiences of students are the fertile starting points for observing, researching and questioning the world, as they ensure a genuine personal commitment.

GEO—DESIGN is a platform to explore the social, economic, territorial, and geopolitical forces shaping design today. The department GEO—DESIGN within the two-year master’s course acknowledges the legacy of industrial production as the fundamental source for the expertise and agency of the designer in contemporary society while problematizing and addressing its historic contribution to environmental and social instability and its incompatibility with models of sustainable or even survivable futures.

In the first year of the Master Information Design the student obtains the skills and knowledge to take on an individual design research project. Students are challenged to develop a critical, autonomous attitude towards current practices and paradigms in the design field and how these relate to society. During the second year students develop a thesis and design project in which the designer uses, showcases and communicates the tools and attitude developed in the first year of the study. The programme is structured in such a way that it fully supports students to explore their own fields of interest within the various assignments. The master Information Design is situated in a domain framed by three crucial notions: technology, critical reflection and communication.