Sustainable Design

Image: A 94m2 scale model, exploring perceptions, beliefs and contradictions surrounding sustainability (IF:Laboratory)

• A critical and polemical course that relocates design at the forefront of the search for social, economic and environmental solutions; leading toward a more nuanced sustainable design culture, in which essential debate begins to unpack, question and explore new and innovative ways of working
• The MA Sustainable Design at University of Brighton delivers a broad and comprehensive foundation of sustainable design principles, models and theories. The programme engages directly with artists, designers and architects need for creative sustenance, meaning and authorship; acknowledging the impact such contributions make to a healthy and productive culture of sustainability
• The MA Sustainable Design is 'metadisciplinary'; breaking free of the restrictive language and culture of disciplinarity that inhibits much of the progress in this context. This 'ecological' - rather than 'mechanistic' - worldview enables a deeper and more expansive engagement with reality (rather than its artificially separated parts), and values people as individuals with skills, passions, abilities and drive, rather than just representatives of a particular discipline
  
• A cutting-edge postgraduate programme, which fully embraces the opportunities arising through emerging sustainable design practices, whilst stepping forward to pioneer new and provocative means through which sustainability may be more fully achieved; pushing the edges of the discipline outwards to colonise new territories of expertise and understanding
• The MA Sustainable Design is distinctive, internationally, by placing critical thinking, debate, knowing and understanding at its core. This original emphasis provides the essential means to fully explore, create and implement practical and effective ways of designing, producing and consuming, today
• The MA Sustainable Design delivers an expansive understanding of sustainable design (the discipline), sustainable designs (the stuff) and sustainable designing (doing it); developing tools, methods and frameworks that inform the creation of objects, spaces and experiences in compliance with the fundamental precepts of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Image: An 'emotionally durable' product that gradually conforms to the shape of your pocket (IF:Laboratory)

The University of Brighton MA Sustainable Design consists of 5 units of study, as follows:

Sustainable Design: Present(s)

20 Credits / Semester 1

This unit provides students with a comprehensive foundation of established sustainable design principles, theories and methodologies.

Regardless of sustainable design experience or knowledge, this unit is accessible to those with the ambition and ‘will’ to orient their work in this direction, and as such, provides both an enabling platform through the establishing of core competencies essential to effective engagement with sustainability design, today; themes covered include cradle to cradle, low-carbon building & production, design for recycling, biodegradability, biomimicry, alternative energy, ecological thinking, permaculture, disassembly and systems thinking for example.

Spanning the first semester, this unit takes the form of a series of seminars, workshops and discussion groups, which collectively provide students with a comprehensive understanding of established sustainable design principles.

Students create a video manifesto lasting 5-minutes, through which the key problems and opportunities for sustainable design through their individual practice are framed and clearly articulated; a workbook of research, process and development undertaken throughout this unit of study is also submitted for assessment.

Research Methods

20 Credits / Semester 1

This unit provides an overview of design research methods to engender a critical ‘spirit of enquiry’ through experimentation, exploration, observation, writing and testing.

The individual’s research skills are developed to enable them to construct research questions, hypotheses and methodologies to underpin the development of innovation. The module utilises both conceptual and real spaces within which exploration and experimentation can take place and where hypotheses can be interrogated.

It promotes a scholarly approach to original investigation to gain knowledge and understanding. It will focus on the student gaining a broad understanding of the principles of research methods and their practical application.

This unit provides a student with an opportunity to reflect on and consolidate the research skills and knowledge learnt during undergraduate study and to integrate, employ and extend these in the development of a research proposal. The research unit will support the student to gain a more autonomous position in the process of critical enquiry and research methodologies. The unit activities and tasks will be conducted both independently and as a collaborative group.

Studio

60 Credits / Semester 1 & 2

This unit provides a reflective and productive environment to create, realize and critique new and innovative sustainable concepts, models and strategies.

The emphasis of the Studio unit is on the individual, and it provides a reflective and productive environment within which students create, realize and critique new and innovative design concepts, theoretical positions and practice based research methods, particular to sustainable design. This unit aims to situate the student in a position of authority, enabling them to confidently and critically take ownership of their individually defined practice.

This unit spans two projects – entitled ‘Behaviours’ and ’Matters’ – in semesters one and two. The ‘Behaviours’ project takes place in semester 1, and provides students with a theoretical context for the studio-based investigation, analysis and generation of essential design criteria that shape patterns of consumption. In semester 2, students undertake the ‘Matters’ project; a studio-based experience that places emphasis on materiality, and the nature of physical experience as mediated through the design, production and physical manifestation of things. In this way, the investigative nature of this unit is split into two fundamental streams of enquiry.

Sustainable Design: Future(s)

20 Credits / Semester 2  

This unit pushes the edges of the discipline outwards to colonise new territories of expertise, whilst developing a more expansive comprehension of contemporary issues relating to sustainability and design.

Spanning the second semester, this unit takes the form of a series of seminars, workshops and discussion groups, which collectively provoke and establish a ‘critical laboratory space’, which invites a broad range of specialist practitioners, writers, researchers, manufacturers and theorists to present their work in the context of sustainability; examining themes including consumer motivation, behaviour, phenomenology, deep ecology, temporality, consciousness, emotional durability, materiality, defuturing and experience-authoring, for example.

Following this, students are asked to present a ‘model of sustainable design’ at a review event, through which the role and potential of sustainable design through their individual practice is framed and clearly articulated.

In addition to these ‘models of sustainable design’, a workbook of research, process and development undertaken throughout this unit of study is also submitted for assessment.

Master

60 Credits / Semester 3

This unit represents the culmination, integration and application of experiences, methods, skills and mastery accrued throughout the programme thus far.

Throughout this unit of study, each student's work is structured by an individually-defined 'statement of intent'; assessment is aligned with the intentions laid out in this statement. Assessment of final master work is aligned with the intentions laid out in this statement, and the critical framework that it explicitly articulates.

This process enables creative practitioners to explore and pioneer distinctive territories of expertise - a form of engagement that enables one to establish new ways of working, characterized by an individually-defined approach to pervasive issues of sustainability and design.

The final body of master work must be developed through practice(s) relevant to each particular student, and their enquiry; these might include the development and production of design proposals, a written thesis, a documentary, an ad campaign, an article for a leading publication, a touring exhibition, for example, or a combination of the above.

Image: Students do an eco-makeover with Oliver Heath for ITV's Tonight: With Sir Trevor McDonald
The MA Sustainable Design at Brighton is a solution-focused course, for a post-awareness-raising era of change, redirection and activism through design.

Sustainable design is maturing. This coming of age relocates design at the forefront of the search for solutions to economic, social and behavioural dimensions of sustainability, in addition to the already-established focus on energy and materials. The MA Sustainable Design embraces the opportunities arising through emerging practices, whilst stepping forward to pioneer new and provocative means through which sustainability may be more fully achieved.

The MA Sustainable Design at Brighton adopts a distinctive position in the sustainable design debate, both nationally (as described above) and internationally. In addition to delivering a broad and comprehensive foundation of sustainable design principles, models and theories, the programme engages directly with artists, designers and architects need for creative sustenance, meaning and authorship; acknowledging the impact such contributions make to a healthy and productive culture of sustainability. It also recognizes and nurtures the value that communication, commentary and expression have to the adoption of sustainability concerns to invigorate the culture of essential critique that affords design with the properties of social, economic and environmental change.

If sustainable design is to grow and develop over the coming decades, it is essential that we foster new and sustainable cultures of creative practice, which place an emphasis on new interpretations of familiar design contexts, enabled by the visioning capabilities of the sustainable design entrepreneur – a more expansive understanding of sustainable design (the discipline), sustainable designs (the stuff) and sustainable designing (doing it) is needed, if progress is to be made; leading to new understandings of sustainability – and unsustainability – in this context, and in response, develop tools, methods, frameworks and creative propositions for sustainable change.

Lighting solutions that question the meaning, language and values of plastic (Lizzie Lee)

Full-time only: 1 year (3 years max)
Location: Grand Parade Campus

There is no formal deadline for receipt of applications, and applications may be made at any time.

At the point of admission, students are expected to have clear reasoning behind their choice to undertake this programme, nominal understanding of the context of sustainable design underpinned by a desire and determination to know more.

Candidates will normally have a previous degree in a design subject (examples might include Product, Industrial, Furniture and 3D Design, Fashion Design and Textiles Design, Three Dimensional Craft, Graphic Design and Illustration, Interior and Spatial or Architectural Design) or equivalent experience in design practice.

Direct access to semester 3 of the programme will be considered only where applicants have accrued appropriate number of credits at either M-Level or postgraduate study in a relevant subject.

Applicants must demonstrate - through their ‘personal statement’ within the application form, and where appropriate, at interview - a clear motivation to engage with issues of sustainability and design through demonstrating:

• an ability to articulate individual perceptions and understandings of sustainable design
• an ability to positively engage in critical discussion regarding their work and its broader implications in relation  to sustainability
• to present a body of work that demonstrates experience and competency within the design processes
• an ambition to critically appraise and develop their practice within the context of sustainability

Overseas applicants must meet the above entry requirements, and additionally have proven competence in written and spoken English at an appropriate level of fluency (equivalent to an IELTS score of 6).

Planner by units - click to download full version of MA Sustainable Design course planner

Image:Re-flower Project: a series of collectable 'kits' for making precision objects with materials found at home (Woojin Kim)

Following completion of the course, a book is produced in which each student writes a contributing chapter, illustrated by their work undertaken throughout the year. Importantly, these chapters within this collective portfolio do not attempt to create sweeping definitions of sustainable design in its entirety. Rather, these short, critical texts serve to distill each individual's scholarly and refined position within the broader sustainable design debate, and examine the key questions that drive their research and process. Through doing this, the book provides a multitude of discreet angles and approaches, with the collective aim of recalibrating the parameters of 'good design' in an unsustainable age.

Download the pdf e-book from the group graduating in 2011, The 'S' Word: Collective Pathways to Sustainability

or visit our student work pages for MA Sustainable Design