Studium
The MA Industrial Design is a curiosity-based and practice-led programme enabling you to play a meaningful role in shaping technological, ecological, and equitable futures. Through experimental learning and collective sense-making, this two-year course provides a platform for you to expand your creative perspectives and instincts for positively influencing a rapidly changing design landscape. Our interdisciplinary environment fosters diverse connections to internal, external, local, and international networks through which you can deepen your professional practice and elevate your career.
Course Philosophy
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” – Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
The MA Industrial Design programme philosophy is driven by a belief that, in order to design for complex realities, design requires inclusive and optimistic approaches geared towards transdisciplinary exchange and collaborations. The limitations and hidden consequences of prevalent methods in design – namely design thinking, convenience-driven and human-centred design – are increasingly evident. Over the past century, a reliance on solutionist frameworks has failed to generate alternative ecological and social narratives capable of adapting to the unrelenting acceleration of technologies. Yet, designers are often taught to frame every issue, no matter how complex, as a problem to be solved. Design needs to expand its viewpoint in order to evolve and adapt. Industrial Design needs fresh impulses and inspiring ideas to shape and explore possible futures through design. It needs designers committed to creating these futures, today.
In the MA Industrial Design at ZHdK, we aim to expand the industrial design practice beyond its traditional disciplinary limits. We believe that the most transformative work is generated in the spaces between innovation and speculation, present and potential futures, designs that enable and those that envision. Our curriculum sets a stage for straddling both spaces, using design to bridge different intents together and to propose new possibilities for products, interactions, and aesthetics. If you’re up for the challenge, join a vibrant community making its mark on the future.
Programme Structure (Major)
The Master's programme is a full-time, two-year course structured across four semesters.
In the first year, you will enhance your ability to engage in research and personal reflection, expand your design and communication repertoire and build research knowledge in relation to your field of interest. Through a series of set collaborative and individual projects, you will explore different design approaches, contexts and intents. All of the projects, methods, and insights from the first year serve as a foundation for developing your own MA project and producing a body of work that reflects the professional context in which you wish to practise. The first year culminates in a colloquium where you will present your thesis concept and timeline to reviewers and peers.
At the beginning of the second year, you are expected to initiate your own thesis project and to decide where it sits in the constellation between design for innovation and design for speculation. You become progressively independent through the third and fourth semester. The final semester is dedicated to the realisation of your design project, the completion of a written thesis, and presentation of your work in an exhibition. Course offerings are continuously refined each year to reflect the students’ practices, the evolving design profession, and the world around us.
Students have access to an atelier space shared with five other MA in Design cohorts: Trends & Identity, Game Design, Interaction Design, Knowledge Visualisation, and Visual Communication.
Minor
A quarter of the course time is dedicated to the interdisciplinary minor programme. This programme sharpens writing skills and teaches research methods, design theory and methodology, digital research techniques, presentation skills and entrepreneurship. Students can also choose from a range of courses focused on future careers: applied and entrepreneurial (design as artefact), critical and speculative (design as statement) or communicative and reflective (design as reflection).
Career paths
Graduates of the ZHdK MA Industrial Design programme are poised to take on senior and leading roles in industry, establish their own design practices, launch entrepreneurial ventures, or pursue academic career paths in research or teaching.
Application
The programme starts each autumn semester in September. The application period runs from mid-autumn to the beginning of the year. For current dates, please visit zhdk.ch. The application requires, among other things, a portfolio, a letter of motivation and an outline of your research interests.
We are looking for critical makers with an open mindset who have a Bachelor's degree in design or a design-related discipline, such as engineering, architecture, art, fashion, or media communication.
If you have specific questions or curiosities about the content of the programme, we encourage you to get in touch with Lukas Franciszkiewicz, Head of MA Industrial Design.
For general information about the application process, please contact Chahna Gottet, Programme Administrator.
Curious about what to expect? Check out the MA Industrial Design Instagram.
Further Information
Programme details
Interview with Head of MA
Major Minor
Application
