Master in Design, Space & Communication

Application deadline: April 7, 2017

Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD)
Boulevard James-Fazy 15
1201 – Geneva
Switzerland

www.head-geneve.ch

What
The MA brings together graduates from design, visual communication, architecture, media and art with the ambition of creating an expanded field of design, a design in which traditional disciplines collide and blur, allowing new possibilities for the interaction between space, information, narrative, performance, media and art to emerge.

The programme champions an explorative approach to design where investigation through thinking and making is critical to the development of a designers personal practice and their future professional progress. The MA programme content is devised to give students all they require towards developing personal themes and establishing a strong individual design practice.

As a student on the MA you will spend two years in transdisciplinary workshops, working with experimental media and materials, learning a broad range of specialised tools and techniques to create unique innovative experiential environments and interventions.

How
The programme offers the opportunity to gain experience through a variety of learning modules ranging from workshops and collaborations with external partners, to collective and individual projects, exhibitions, as well as editorial platforms, debates and publications.

Outcome
As a graduate of the MA, you will become an independent design practitioner with the ability to master design in real spaces, confidently developing from the architectural into scenography, graphics, media, objects, projection, furniture. You will understand the tools and techniques required in the design process with an ability to generate models, plans, illustrations, publications, and an understanding of materials and fabrication methods. You will look at design from new perspectives, forever looking for new opportunities to expand and enrich your practice with the unexpected, the innovative, the poetic.

Course structure
The MA is a two year course that culminates with the designing of a 1:1 scale total environment that will be produced and exhibited in a gallery open to the public.

In the first year you will start investigating and establishing the key themes and subjects that will become the basis for your personal design practice. Alongside this you will gain experience and build skills around a bewildering array of tools through numerous workshops and projects under the direction of worldwide renowned designers, architects, curators and artists. Projects from previous years include Minima Cinema for Tous Les Ecrans Film Festival, Salone del Mobile, Petit h Hermes, Natural History Museum Geneva.

By the end of year one, you will have gained the confidence and skills necessary to establish the framework and methods necessary to take a major design project from inception to completion.

During the second year, you will focus on this personal project through an intense dialogue with the programme tutors which finalises in a major exhibition. In the process of this year you will become a compelling communicator, able to master a design project and its inherent variables like objects, signage, spaces, media, installation, displays, films, texts, books, photographs, including its post-documentation and publishing in different mediums.

Communication strategies, partners and network
The MA collaborates and partners with public institutions, museums, galleries, companies and magazines, as a way to expand and explore what a professional design practice can be.

The MA also encourages you to join the wider community of HEAD and Geneva, promoting the engagement with other departments (visual arts, cinema, fashion etc) and the opportunity to attend open workshops, talks and conferences that constantly take place within HEAD.

Keywords: experimental—immediate surroundings—collective—public engagement—new experiences—science-fiction—cinematic—narrative—challenging—world and the objects—enigmatic—controversial—political—everyday—provocative

Head of Department: Arno Mathies, Rosario Hurtado
Assistants: Mathias Zieba
Teaching staff: Ruedi Baur, Alexandra Midal, Dominic Robson
Invited speakers: Yair Barelli, Matali Crasset, Camille De dieu, Roberto Feo, Marteen Gielen, Marguerite Humeau, Gabriel Klasmer, Tristan Kobler, David Louveau, Fidel Peugeot, Vivian Phillizot, Sébastien Quéquet, Jan & Randoeld, Felipe Ribon, Cristina Ricupero, Pascal Rousseau, David Roux-Fouillet, Maki Suzuki, Noam Toran, Yarza Twins, Nick Williamson