Year 1
The Master in Design for Emergent Futures is organized into three terms: Oct-Dec, Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun. Each term includes design studios, seminars and expert masterclasses. A research trip is also offered by the master, previous trips have been to Shenzhen, China and Cuba.
Design Studio⇝
Design Studio sessions are central to the program. They focus on real world experimentation and socio-technical development. During the year, students develop technical, aesthetic and conceptual skills by working on real-life scenarios.
Design studios encourage students to create design responses to explore their curiosities through innovation. They are stimulated to be creative and follow a culture of making where prototyping acts as a generator of knowledge and experimentation is crucial for problem solving.
Seminars ⇝
Seminars delve into specific domains of knowledge and are delivered by relevant expert practitioners and scholars. Throughout the academic year, international experts from the fields of design and emergent technologies, contribute to the program as guest lecturers.
In the seminars, students are supported through individual and group reflection sessions to develop their own identity and skill set, knowledge and attitude as designers.
Workshops ⇝
In the workshop weeks, students are exposed to a set of technologies and sociocultural phenomena that have the capacity to disrupt our present understanding of society, industry and the economy. Technologies include Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies.
Students learn a modular set of maker skills and tools and how these can be used in the design process to translate their ideas into prototypes and prototypes into products. Skills include coding, digital fabrication, hardware design, synthetic biology, and computational thinking.