MA Space & Communication, Contemporary Design Practices

Expanded design practice, space and exhibition design, visual communication design, design consultancy, multimedia design, cross-disciplinary design.

The MA Space & Communication is a course which sits definitively and proudly on the periphery, seeking new dialogues between design and other areas of knowledge. It is exactly at the confluence between design and other thought processes and disciplines, particularly cinema, speculative fiction, political theory, art practice and sociology that makes design relevant. The MA Space & Communication considers design as an essential, empowering kind of ‘verb’ (ie to design). ‘To design’ is to engage with and elicit change in the world, and as such is not a stand-alone ‘discipline’ framed by its traditional theoretical and commercial lineages. Through workshops, briefs and the memoire, the course constantly disrupts and challenges what it thinks design is (and as a result, the contemporary validity and relevance of the course itself), revising it every year through a collective, shared act of curiosity and belief in its potentials.

The students output, as a result, is as varied as the questions the course asks about design and its potentials, from designing time-travelling narratives, to designing alternative political movements, to designing speculative societies, modes of communication etc.

The course is in dialogue with both the past, present and future through a nuanced and informed approach to historical research, contemporary social and political awareness, and speculative proposals. The course places emphasis on producing complex, layered narratives that ask viewers and participants to engage in a more meaningful relationship with design, and by disseminating them through multi-mediatic and multi-sensorial materials, from installations, to films, to performances.

Of particular importance is the relationship between design and filmmaking, a cross-disciplinary practice which the course invests in more than probably any other post-graduate design course, both in its theoretical and practice-based outputs.

The programme offers the unique opportunity to gain experience through a variety of learning modules. The modules of the course are organized so that theory and practice are equally constitutive parts of your education, developing your critical faculties and unique point of view while equipping you with the necessary skills to realise your ambitions. This master is a two-year course that culminates with two major pieces of work: the master thesis presented as a visual/physical essay and the practice project that consist on the designing and production of a one-to-one scale spatial project with its inherent variables such as films, objects, media, installation, performance, experience, displays, texts, books and photographs product of the personal investigative process that you developed within the master. 

All through the two years of the master there is great dedication from the course to support the documentation of your work you can finish with a powerful dossier ready to be published in different mediums. 

MA Space and Communication lecturers, speakers & guests in 2023–24
Dominic Robson, Alexandra Midal, Noam Toran, Matali Crasset, Metahaven, Tristan Kobler, Troïka, Yarza Twins, Jordi Canudas, Alexandra Midal, Rosario Hurtado, @el_ultimo_grito, Arno Mathies, Dominic Robson, Noam Toran, Reem Saleh, Joseph Popper, Emanuele Quinz, Trojans Collective, Pfliegerfoegle, Malak Mebkhout, Sebastian Quequet, Jeremie Cerman, Rita Hajj, Damien Delille, Margaux Janin, Eloïse Vo, Tanguy Benoit, Mathias Zieba, Alexandre Burdin, Jonathan Bornand, Simon Muller.

Heads of department: Rosario Hurtado & Arno Mathies.

2023 online applications are now open. Application deadline: April 3, 2023, at 5pm CEST (Swiss time).

For questions, please contact the Office of Studies: 
Fine Arts / Film studies : +41 (0) 22 558 60 75. Design : +41 (0) 22 558 53 35. Email: admission.head [​at​] hesge.ch. More information here.