Contemporary Design

Contemporary Design MA

The Contemporary Design Programme supports students to discover and advance their individual creative processes and in linking them to the problem-solving processes and methods of others. Students are working in a multifaceted learning environment that provides support for creativity, as well as critical and analytical thinking. It educates sensitive and visionary students who have skills to propose radical solutions and responsible innovations for the future.

In the programme, students learn strong practical design skills for material productions and experiments. They also learn to profit from emerging technologies and materials in their artistic and design practices. During their studies, students learn to critically reflect and innovate on established design traditions, emerging interpretations of design and their own design practice. The program trains students to display a strong artistic vision and take responsibility, argument and stand behind their work as a designer.

Students are also trained to understand how the field of contemporary design works internationally and how their own work is connected to broader developments in society and commercial opportunities. They gain experience in exhibiting and curatorial practices in the fields of design and contemporary craft, as well as how to connect their work to external partners and sponsors. The graduates are familiar with means to commercialize design and design driven innovations.

The program bridges research and design, and it provides students with strong foundation in practice-based research. The students learn skills in gathering and analyzing information and applying it to design and research. The programme provides students with skills needed to continue in doctoral studies.

Education Content

The Contemporary Design Programme enables designers to nurture an artistic mindset in a multidisciplinary environment that fuels design innovations as well as personal and business engagements. In the program design is understood in a broad sense including experimental and conceptual works from the spheres of critical and speculative design, experimental design, contemporary craft and product design.

The education prepares the students to develop their own creative and experimental processes to explore and materialize ideas, concepts and final designs. Alongside their own creative work, students study in multidisciplinary teams and develop their skills to present, exhibit, produce and commercialize their design works and talent. The education is studio-based with close connections to real life, critically merging features of hands-on material exploration and fabrication with observations of contemporary and emerging phenomena.

For further info about Contemporary Design MA you can reach out to our associate professor:

Maarit MÄKELÄ
Associate Professor, Practice Led Design Research (Department of Design, Master’s Programme in Contemporary Design)

Tel. +358 50 3722 168
[email protected]

School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University
PO Box 31000, FI-00076 AALTO, FINLAND

Personal Exploration

The aim of the course is to provide challenging environment for action, where the student is encouraged to experiment his/her ideas related to a given theme with a brave and open-minded attitude.
MUO-E5020

Critical Design Practices

Critical Design Practices is an MA level course by programmes Contemporary Design and Fashion and Collection Design mixing theory and practice.

Product and Form I + II

The topics of the course belong to the fundamentals of design capability. The course gives the students an opportunity to focus on form and aesthetics and deepen their skills.
MUO-E5025
MUO-E5026

Product Design in Ceramics

The practical realization of a design project in ceramics, the theme of which changes yearly: from tabletop to surface design and others. The task is to design small scale utilitarian objects.
MUO-5022

STEPS. Floor tiles. Caspar Åkerblom and Liisa Vuorenpää. Material: stained stoneware and engobe

Experimental Design

The course follows a pre-determined and changing topic that establishes the frame inside which the students work. Each time a different corporate partner is involved in determining the characteristics of the introduced course case.
MUO-E5009

Glass Challenge

The aim of the course is to encourage students to refine and articulate a personal approach to the discipline and improve skills in communicating ideas and getting familiar with the co-operative nature of glass making practices.
MUO-E5023

Wood Studio Design Project

Wood Studio Design project CoDe

Materials and Living Systems

As biomaterial is a broad and currently widely used term, the students learn to explore and discover new perspectives to biomaterials within their systems and understand how to create their own creative approach towards these materials.