This research-led and practice-based MA addresses the needs of graduates from furniture and related discipline backgrounds, or those who wish to collaborate with professionals in the field. Our Furniture Design MA is one of several postgraduate design courses that co-exist at the Cass, offering rich opportunities for the collaborative and multidisciplinary approach that is a feature of the current and future design sector, and a requirement for success in the field.
The future is largely shaped by design decisions, which implies a responsibility for designers to combine experimentation and radical thinking with care, effective research and collaboration with those who will be affected by the outcomes of designers' work. The work of a designer is not limited to ensuring that furniture is safe and functions well.
You'll want to imbue your work with meaning, to use it to communicate, to engage emotions and inspire response. Furniture also needs to be designed to be attractive and desirable in the marketplace and relevant to consumers, meaning you'll need an exhaustive overview of current and forthcoming furniture products in order to be competitive.
The Master course intends to form knowledgeable designers of the most advanced models of relationship between the product development processes, market dynamics and technological developments. It also intends to complete the training of professionals in R&D, marketing and brand management in the furniture sector, offering them a better understanding of design management skills as a lever to create a competitive advantage.
The Master is based on the capacity of Italian companies, working in the furniture industry, to use design as a fundamental lever of competitive advantage and a structural element of corporate culture. The core of the program is focused on the knowledge generated from the advantageous relationships instilled between the Italian production system and the network of professions involved in design. The Master sets its cultural roots in the “Italian model” of rapport between enterprise and design, while also aiming to develop new knowledge in innovation that responds to the challenges posed by technological, social and market changes.
The program’s structure takes on a systemic vision of the role of design in the furniture industry, teaming new fields of interest to the traditional focus on product development, along with the growing importance of brands and its tangible and intangible elements of expression.
This course is an innovative collaboration between Manchester School of Art and the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University. It brings together students from creative and manufacturing backgrounds to foster original approaches to product and furniture design for manufacture whilst exploring personal philosophies and cultural contexts.
Supported by extensive hand, machine and digital workshops across a range of materials, you will investigate and challenge the application and use of materials and processes within making and manufacturing to embrace opportunities for innovation across a breadth of product and furniture design practices.
As part of the wider MA/MFA Design Network, a series of options units are delivered to enable you to further expand your creative agendas and design methodologies. Within these options, you can choose to develop design ambitions within a business context, through a unit delivered by the Manchester Metropolitan Business School, which cultivates project planning and management skills, raises understanding of markets and marketing opportunities, and highlights the financial factors and concerns that impact on production design decisions within a commercial manufacturing environment.
Features
Graduates will develop theoretical and practical skills suitable for roles in; design consultancy; design for engineering and manufacturing; design management; and design research for industry or academic research and teaching. The programme will also prepare graduates who wish to go on to self-employment, establishing and running their own design/manufacturing businesses.
The MA Design: Products & Furniture course is aimed at the designer with a passion to develop innovative products, furniture, systems or services. The course encourages a broad and diverse range of approaches to design practice that reflect the designer’s personal philosophies and creative methodologies while engaging in the realities of designing for new and emerging markets.
As designers, you'll be encouraged to explore the multidisciplinary field of design and challenge the norms in design thinking. The course sets out to challenge pre-conceived attitudes to the relationship between traditional craft skills, new technology and modern manufacture; encouraging the cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches informed by collaborative working and hands on experience.
You will:
You'll study modules designed to expand your awareness and understanding of product design while developing a wider appreciation of a designer's role within modern society, and the impact of new thinking in business in the design industry.
The course focuses on the needs of future professional design practice and work to promote the understanding of both local and international business and support entrepreneurial approaches to developing products and services, and the development of strategic design for business success.
Through it's project-based nature, the course emphasises the importance of independent learning, collaborative team working, creative problem solving and self-organisation skills. You'll develop a practice-based project for your final Major Study Project via the creation of a learning agreement as part of the Research Methods module; this is written in consultation with tutors and informs your final learning outcomes.
Learning and teaching methods will comprise:
This course has been developed to meet the needs of industry in the UK and overseas. It is specifically designed to increase the employability of its graduates in a business context by identifying new service, strategy and product opportunities, and conducting projects in collaboration with industrial partners. You'll become more strategically aware and technically literate, and will communicate concepts and outcomes at an advanced level in an ever changing global market place.
On completion, graduates will have acquired skills and knowledge to set up their own businesses, to work in manufacturing industries, design consultancies, and research and development organisations, or to progress to PhD study by engaging in further research.
Take a look at our postgraduate fees and funding page for more information on scholarships, loans, and other funding opportunities.
This research-led Interior Design MA addresses the needs of graduates from interior design and related discipline backgrounds, or those who wish to collaborate with professionals in the field. Our Interior Design MA is one of several postgraduate design courses that co-exist at the Cass, offering rich opportunities for the collaborative multidisciplinary approach that is a feature of the current and future design sector and a requirement for success in the field.
The future is largely shaped by design decisions, which implies a responsibility for designers to combine experimentation and radical thinking with care, effective research and collaboration with those who will be affected by the outcomes of designers' work. The work of a designer is not limited to ensuring that furniture is safe and functions well.
You'll want to imbue your work with meaning, to use it to communicate, to engage emotions and inspire response. Furniture also needs to be designed to be attractive and desirable in the marketplace and relevant to consumers, meaning you'll need an exhaustive overview of current and forthcoming furniture products in order to be competitive.
Study interaction design at an advanced level and explore new approaches to design creating dynamic proposals that respond to the needs of our rapidly changing society.
At Sheffield Institute of Arts interaction design is cross-disciplinary and investigates human-technological futures via design related interactions that lie between the digital and the physical. Using a practice based approach you explore the designing of interactive digital products, environments services and systems.
Interaction design is most often studied by graduates from a variety of backgrounds including • interaction design • digital media • fine art • product design • graphic design • furniture design • architecture • computer science. Your projects are supported by lecturers who are design specialists, researchers and practitioners. Modules are supported by lecturers who are design specialists in areas as diverse as • exhibition design • HCI • medical products • materials development • design thinking • social design • design anthropology.
During the course you work with experts in other departments as well as outside of the University.
As a postgraduate design student you join an established network of creative people that encourage and support you to drive your studies to the next level. Our postgraduate framework of design courses has been designed to allow you to come together with students from different disciplines, backgrounds and cultures to share teaching and learning experiences and explore your creative identities through dialogue and practice.
The primary intention of the programme is to allow you to achieve your personal employment ambitions, whether as a design professional in the creative industries, or in related areas such as marketing or research. You are also well placed to go onto further study at PhD level.
Employability
The course has a strong vocational focus to prepare, encourage and develop your confidence for employment.
The MA/MFA programme has a strong relationship with the University’s Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC), who take an active part in engaging MA Design students in research, knowledge transfer and live projects. You are also encouraged to seek industrial sponsors or collaborators for your individual project work and are given advice and support in doing this. This long established link with our Research Department supports a continuing tradition of graduates from the MA/MFA working as research assistants and/or continuing their studies to PhD.
If you are a part-time student in relevant employment or on sabbatical, you have the opportunity to plan course projects based in your workplace and relevant to your own and your employer's aims. This brings real-world experience to the course. You may go on to work as a professionally employed designer or design manager, work independently as a designer/producer or work as a researcher in design or new product development. You may also wish to go into teaching design in further and higher education.
Project-based course
You choose your own project content and this is supported by lectures and seminars dealing with professional practice issues and reviewing your progress. You also take part in regular group and individual tutorials.
Your final major project is the culmination of your research and studio-based design practice. It demonstrates that you can deal with difficult contemporary questions and take a leading role as a design professional.
Research-led expertise
We are one of the oldest established art and design institutions in the UK, renowned for producing internationally recognised research. Your projects are supported by lecturers who are design specialists in areas as diverse as medical products, materials development, furniture and sustainability.
Vibrant and supportive learning environment
During the course you regularly take part in constructive critical debates about your own work and that of your peers. You need to communicate your research, ideas and designs in ways that are appropriate to professional leadership.
You study alongside MA and MFA Design students for part of your course and benefit from a vibrant, international, collaborative and supportive postgraduate environment.
Excellent facilities and creative resources
You have access to a huge range of creative resources to experiment and engage with including • 3D printing for rapid prototyping • state-of-the-art hardware and software • photography studios • a creative media centre • a gallery • well-equipped workshops.
You also have access to our award-winning learning centre featuring a specialist art, design and media library and extensive online resources.
MA and MFA study
MA and MFA students complete the same modules during the course except that MFA students complete an extra project module. The MFA project encourages you to develop professional skills that help you to identify, instigate, and deliver projects with external partners, such as communities, galleries or businesses. You find a project partner, agree a brief and then deliver the project to a professional standard.
This course is part of the Sheffield Institute of Arts (SIA), an amazing, diverse community of makers – where staff, students and partners work as equals to deliver real innovation and creativity. SIA opened in 1843 and is one of the UK's oldest Art and Design Schools. We have recently moved into the Head Post Office, a redesigned Grade II listed building. It includes state-of-the-art workshops which provide you with a unique studio-based learning environment in the heart of the creative community.
FULL-TIME STRUCTURE
Semester one
• project 1 • theory supporting practice
Semester two
• project 2 • negotiated project
Semester three
• major project
Semester four – MFA students only
• MFA project
PART-TIME STRUCTURE
Semester one (year 1)
• theory supporting practice • negotiated project
Semester two (year 2)
• project 1 • project 2
Semester three (year 3)
• major project
Semester four – MFA students only (year 4)
• MFA project
Assessment and feedback are vital parts of the learning process in creative disciplines. Most assessment is through individual project work which combines research and creative practice. Assessment calls for both excellent creative work and well-documented research.
As a graduate from this course you might become a • creative technologist • experiential marketer • interaction designer • artist • designer • maker • product designer • design researcher • interface designer • systems designer • UX designer • design academic • PhD student.
The Technology of Wood and Plastic international degree programme provides specialisation either in woodwork or plastic technology. Teaching is organised into modules combining lectures, seminars and laboratory work in the recently renovated laboratory of Polymer Physics and Technology, which is equipped with state-of-the-art devices. The programme also emphasises the basic practical knowledge of CAD-engineering programmes and CAM-manufacturing technologies as they are extremely important in every industrial sector all over the world. The curriculum gives students the unique opportunity to implement their individual research projects in collaboration with various companies.
This Master programme gives for students` vocational and professional preparation for working in the international engineering industry as a designer/constructor, specialist, industrial engineer or middle manager. This curriculum gives valuable knowledge and the practical experience necessary to work with customised furniture projects (hotels, restaurants, public sector buildings, cruise ships) or material selection and technology development for plastic products manufacturing. Skills in CAD/CAM engineering work in connection with knowledge about the technological properties of wood-, laminates, plywood, chipboard, medium density fibreboard, plastics, metals, leather, textiles and composite materials that might come in handy for different professions.
MA Interior and Spatial Design at Chelsea College of Arts explores conceptual spatial concerns and notions of how we inhabit space in an area of study that's distinct from but still complementary to architecture.
What students can expect from the course:
- To address issues about how we inhabit space and develop sensibilities about intervening into existing architectural structures or situations
- To engage with the language of architecture and the experiential aspects of what it is to inhabit and interact with our spatial environment; from the functional design of built structures to fine art installations, from furniture to computer animation or film
- To explore interior and spatial design from either a research orientated or professional practice point of view or combination of both
Phase 1: Analysis of Practice and Exploration of Methodologies
Phase 2: Development and Consolidation
Phase 3: Resolution
These phases are set within a credit framework of three assessed units:
- Studio practice and Advanced studio practice, which run sequentially
- Theoretical studies, which runs throughout the course
Studio practice involves evolving and developing a personal programme of studio work and related research. Theoretical Studies provides a framework for you to develop a critical research paper, enabling you to locate your ideas and practice in relation to contemporary debate on cultural and theoretical issues.
Throughout the course you participate in individual and group tutorials, develop skills through Personal Professional Development workshops and on-line resources while the postgraduate talks are organised to introduce you to a range of visiting artists and practitioners.
We provide our students with a valuable bridge between study and professional practice, as they engage with leading practitioners through the course. This helps students redefine their current and future practice as professional designers, or progress to further research.
