Master's Degree in Design Research

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.

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.

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.

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.