Master's Degree in Design Research
Think, act, transform.
The Master’s Degree in Design Research is a cross-disciplinary space for reflection in action. Using inventive research methods and experimental focuses in design, this master’s degree invites students to imagine, design, and give material expression to alternatives that can address current challenges.
Description of the curriculum
- Edition: 8th
- Teaching period: from October 2025 to July 2026. Final master's project presentation: July 2026
- Schedule: from Monday to Thursday from 4pm to 7pm
- Modality: on-site
- Language: English
- Price: 10.570 €
- Qualification: Master’s Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design awarded by UVic-UCC - Official title registered in the Register of Universities Centers and Titles (RUCT)-.
- Credits: 60 ECTS
Presentation
In a world marked by uncertainty and complexity, design has a fundamental role to play. The Master’s Degree in Design Research from BAU provides students with the tools to understand and question the present, while at the same time encouraging them to develop transformative proposals in a creative manner and with a critical mindset.
This master’s degree offers a space for reflection in action with rigour, responsibility, and commitment. Students face the challenge of conceiving and building design alternatives that can address current challenges.
To this end, the curriculum adopts a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates and interweaves various disciplines such as architecture, anthropology, political science, and the fine arts. Guided by a philosophy of collaboration, this master’s degree proposes a methodological focus based on research as a creative practice and experimentation with technology and materials. Furthermore, given that it is an official degree, it is a program that can lead to PhD studies.
The Master’s Degree in Design Research from BAU promotes the social role of design and its potential as a driving force for change to successfully address current challenges in a changing, complex society.
Key Concepts
The Master’s Degree in Design Research revolves around five key concepts in terms of content and focus, as well as in methodological and pedagogical terms.
Contemporary thought
This master’s degree draws on the conceptual and methodological tools of contemporary philosophical thought, which allow us to decipher and understand current social, environmental, and political challenges.
A post-humanist vision that challenges our understanding of the human being as an entity separate from technology and nature, and which allows us to challenge anthropocentrism and re-evaluate the relationship between what is human and what is not, offering new ways to understand the world.
Theory and Practice: design as a way of thinking in action
Design is seen as a form of thought in action. Research in design arises from practice, incorporating the experiential, social, and material aspects of design through practical experimentation and trial and error.
Cross-disciplinary approach
This master’s degree adopts a broad, cross-disciplinary, integral vision of design, offering a framework that transcends disciplinary frontiers and adopting a non-hierarchical approach to foster innovative, unprecedented forms of cooperation.
Disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, architecture, science, political science, and fine arts are interwoven to create new ways to understand and respond to current challenges.
The political and social role of design
The master invites students to research design and highlight the political potential of design in a context that recognises design as a tool for social transformation. It also aims to motivate students to become agents for change, using design as a means by which to face contemporary challenges and build a fairer, more sustainable world.
Connection with the local (and international) context
This master’s degree is designed as a platform that allows students to connect with other practices, organisations, and entities in the world of design from a local and international perspective.
Syllabus
The Master’s Degree in Design Research combines core and elective subjects to offer instruction that is adapted to individual interests and the specialisation sought by each student.
This master’s degree is based on a sequential approach in which subjects are taken one after the other. Subjects are also presented as intensive blocs that offer certain specific perspectives of design, allowing students to fully immerse themselves in each subject.
Core subjects
Fiction, Critical and Speculative Design
Explore the role of fiction, speculation and game to create new material narratives.
Social Innovation and Collaborative Design
Understand design not only as a product or service, but as a democratic and social strategy.
Material Cultures and Design Ecologies
This subject allows students to create visions of radical social and environmental futures.
Design, Power and Society
This subject investigates how design can be integrated into power, and how design can become a tool to question power.
Research in Art and Design
This subject explores inventive methods for research in art and design, bringing multiple disciplines and tools into dialogue with each other.
Fabrication and Prototyping
Students experiment and conduct creative research with materials, machines, and bits from multiple areas of design.
Elective subjects
Students can choose two elective subjects from those on offer.
Ethnographies and Design
Students develop an ethnographic sensitivity to learn to observe, investigate, and inhabit the world in another way.
Investigation with Data
Research data and artificial intelligence and explore new methods of visualisation in the sphere of research in design.
Digital Design
Immerse yourself in artificial intelligence applied to visual culture with a critical vocation and creative outlook.
Design and Numeric Control
This subject generates learning environments based on the maker philosophy to acquire advanced knowledge of design.
Internship
Students are offered the possibility of working at leading companies in the field of design that work to meet the needs of the world of work and current social realities.
Final Master Thesis
The Final Master Thesis (TFM) is the structural axis of the master that allows students to create their own research journey and connect in different ways with the courses offered along the master course.
Through the Master Thesis students will be invited to choose among several specializations:
- Speculative and Critical Design: Design Thinking towards the Future
- Experimental Design: Digital fabrication and material innovation
- Socially Responsible Design: collaborative design and social impact
- Design Pedagogy: design for education
- Crosscutting Itinerary
The TFM demonstrates the student’s contribution to the field and their ability to communicate complex research for peers and the community
The Master envisions the TFM as a space to develop collaborations with external entities. Students can either choose among the range of entities suggested by the master or explore new collaborations to develop test and implement their TFM projects in a real context.
Projects
GUIDED OBSOLESCENCE (Nine Human Blocks)
by Maialen Argoitia, Andrea Chavez, Tendai Dzimwasha, Vanessa Geldres, Ana Hernando, Marta Llurba, Nicolás Mendez, Heloísa Oliveira & Matilde Sartori
Assemblages of Care. Enredos y vínculos de cuidados para masculinidades no patriarcales
by Jose Barrera Medina
uMUL_reflections on the golem to-be and its myth
by Nicolas Francisco Mendez FreireTeachers
Coordinator
Lluís Nacenta
Curator, writer, musician and researcher in the space of confluence of art, technology and science.
Roc Albalat
PhD Candidate. Graphic designer. Art. Realization
Marta Camps
PhD in Educational Innovation. Degree in fine arts. Pedagogical and artistic researcher.
Cecilia De Marinis
PhD in Urban Design. Architect. Space researcher
Fran Díaz
PhD Candidate. Architect and Master in City and Sustainable Architecture
Elisa Herrera
PhD. Master's Degree in Gender. Degree in Psychology. Social Research.
Alicia Kopf
Doctoranda. Licenciada en Bellas Artes y Grado en Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada. Escritora y artista visual.
Camila René Maggi
PhD. Bachelor's degree in Architecture. Research. Cultural Studies.
Lluís Nacenta
Curator, writer, musician and researcher in the space of confluence of art, technology and science.
Cris Noguer
Designer and researcher
Rubén Pater
Graphic designer
Taller Estampa
Colectivo audiovisual experimental
Nyangala Zolho
Researcher and policy learning designer
Guest teachers
- David Benqué. Design and algorithms
- Paula Bruna. Art and biology
- Jorge Caballero. Interactive media and AI
- Gabriel Calvin. Art and creativity
- Tim Colishaw. Audiovisuals and computer sciences
- Markel Cormenzana. Design for transition
- Sara G. De Ubieta. Crafts and design
- Begonya Enguix Grau. Social anthropology
- Adrià Garcia i Mateu. Design and activism
- Barbara Grabher. Anthropology and gender
- Citlali Hernández Sánchez. Electronic and digital arts
- Agostina Laurenzano. Biomaterials
- Isaac Marrero-Guillamón. Anthropology
- Federica Matelli. Philosophy
- Eduard Molner. Performing arts
- Maria Fernanda Moscoso. Sensory anthropology
- Dorotea Ottaviani. Architecture and participation
- Lekshmy Parameswaran. Carelab
- Ariadna Parreu. Speculative art
- Maro Pebo. Art and biology
- Giuliana Racco. Art and anthropology
- Jaron Rowan. Cultural studies and design epistemologies
- Roger Sansi. Anthropology and sociology
- Olga Subiros. Architecture and curatorship
Partnerships
The master offers the possibility to undertake a Master Thesis with an external entity, be it an association, foundation, ONG, collective, research institution or private company.
This will allow students to land their research into real contexts and learn how to respond to wicked problems and real-world challenges. It will also connect students with a professional and academic network, taking the first steps towards their profesional future.
Possible roles and types that the collaboration can take are:
- Offer space and tools for the research
- Offer the possibility to apply the research to a real context
- Offer the space and tools for testing prototypes
The Master also offers the possibility to undertake an Internship in one of those entities or others selected by students, in an ideal scenario of interconnection between the TFM Project and the internship.
BAU is committed to providing students with an education that strongly links learning with professional or vocational practice.
GREDITS
The Master is linked to the BAU Research Group GREDITS (Grup de Recerca en Disseny i Transformació Social) accredited by AGAUR as "established research group". The multidisciplinary group of designers teachers and reseachers, investigates the role of design as a driver for social transformation.
Career Opportunities
- Multidisciplinary designer
- Designer researcher
- Design lecturer
- Designer of research projects
- Transitional designer
- Social and cultural designer
- Consultant for environmental and sustainable design projects
- Coordinator of digital creation and manufacturing laboratories
- Coordinator of collaborative design projects
- Cultural manager
- Start a PhD
My BAU experience
Skills
- Formulating design proposals that integrate research and experimentation processes in accordance with the paradigms of contemporary design
- Applying methodologies of ethnographic research, both speculative and based on data to execute design projects of various natures
- Executing, prototyping and manufacturing of objects and design projects through the operation of numerical control and digital design tools and technologies
- Analysing the properties and behaviour of materials in order to use them appropriately and innovatively in design processes and projects
- Critical consideration of innovation and social transformation, participation and collaborative design, and other paradigms of contemporary design to facilitate the resolution of problems within the field of design
- Designing services, processes and objects that will provide solutions through the principles of open design and its fields of circulation
- Using the software specific to design by taking into account its applications and repercussions, both in the field of professional design and the field of research
- Understanding and valuing the political economy of art and design and identifying its value cycles, the social life of objects, consumption cycles and recycling in a changing social and economic context
- Applying the strategies of fiction and speculative design, using diegetic prototypes and provoking thought through design as an epistemic object
- Considering the material cultures of design and the many related traditions (philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies…) to conduct research through their objects and materials
- Managing the multiple work processes involved in the practice of design and integrating elements of research and experimentation
Doctorate Program
The Master's Degree in Research and Experimentation in Design at BAU is a 2º-cycle study program that responds to the research concerns of the BAU Doctorate Program structured in two lines of research:
- Design and society. Politics, art and education.
- Communication and its environments. Corporations and institutions; media, networks and territory.
Admission and enrolment
Pre-enrolment and Admission
To apply for a master’s or postgraduate program at BAU, you must request your admission through the pre-enrolment process. Each application is evaluated by the program’s academic coordination team to balance the group composition and provide high-quality training.
BAU's master's and postgraduate programs have limited spots. The pre-enrolment process remains open until all available spots are completed. Therefore, we recommend applying early to ensure your place in the program.
Pre registration: from November 6th 2024 to September 30th 2025.
- Request an interview with the Master's coordinator
- Check the information about the pre registration process
- Download the pre-registration form
Enrolment
Once the admission is confirmed, you will receive an email with the result and the instructions to complete your enrolment and confirm your place.
Two payment options are offered:
- Single payment (2% discount).
- Payment in 3 installments, with no additional charges.
BAU students and alumni who have completed at least 50% of the credits for the Bachelor's Degree, Higher Degree in Design, or Graphic Design Diploma, or 100% of the credits for a Master’s or Postgraduate program, will receive a 10% discount.
Scholarships
BAU offers two scholarships for 50% of the total price of its Master’s Degree in Design Research.
These scholarships are intended to encourage, reward and provide opportunities for designers wishing to delve into experimentation and research in design.
Participation requirements:
- Cover letter
- Average grade in bachelor studies
- B2 level English
- Portfolio (optional)
More information about BAU Design Research Talent Scholarship.
The Master’s Degree in Design Research provides an official university degree and gives access to participation in a PhD program. The master’s degree promotes the social role of design and its potential as en engine of change in light of the challenges of today’s society.
More information about other scholarships and grants.
Quality
The quality of the BAU pedagogical system is guaranteed by various indicators and reports by the seals of (AQU, RUCT, EUC ...). Visit the Quality section.
Degree registered in the Register of Universities, Centers and Titles, RUCT
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