PMFURNDE - MA Furniture Design

The course’s ambition is to educate furniture designers who share a commitment to improving the quality of people’s lives and experiences through their products, and who understand their responsibility towards sustainable development, contributing positively to society, the environment and the economy, both in the present and more importantly for the future. Our graduates will inform their industry of the latest practice, principles and collaborative approaches to inclusive design and will demonstrate what creativity and innovation can bring to the industrial, service and third sectors, as well as to the creative and cultural industries. They will accept their responsibility to be the creative change-makers and leaders of the future, challenging accepted ideas and practices, placing the needs of wider society ahead of the narrow interests of themselves, their employers or their clients.

The course aims to provide a design education relevant to commercial furniture design, equipping its graduates with attributes required for employment or self-employment in the sector. It seeks to ensure that its graduates are confident, knowledgeable, creative, flexible, culturally, socially, ethically and environmentally aware, technically proficient and therefore of value to future employers. The course aims to enable students to think independently, take risks, and work in an exploratory way to seek innovative solutions to design problems. Students are encouraged to understand learning as an iterative process, with apparent success and failure both being relative and valuable as part of the process, thereby becoming critically self-aware and developing resilience and self-reliance. Our students are encouraged and expected to work across subjects in multi-disciplinary teams, learning from peers, thereby discovering increased opportunities for innovation and originality in design. The course encourages a design process that mediates between theoretical frameworks and their associated logical processes, and a making and testing approach that enables conceptual leaps and unexpected connections.

Graduates of the course will be able to use and critique academic and other resources to build a comprehensive and coherent body of discipline-specific knowledge that together with analytical skills acquired through study will enable them to analyse problems, dealing with uncertain and ambiguous situations, and to propose solutions, sustaining argument convincingly. They will be able to work independently, pursuing self-development, managing themselves and leading others, able to communicate effectively with specialist and non-specialist audiences. They will understand the transferability and applicability of their knowledge and skills and the benefits of interdisciplinary study and working, able to contribute meaningfully in a range of roles and situations.

The course curriculum is a balance of underpinning theoretical studies, including research methods, and project-driven practice. All students will engage in ‘live’ projects for external clients, in order to experience professional expectations of standards and ways of working.
Learning opportunities and student choice in curriculum and approach to study are highly individualised, culminating in the self-set and self-directed Major Project, taken in the final term. The Major Project is carefully prepared for by having set of core modules that require students to research fully the context for their project, in the widest possible sense, and to develop their proposals with a full set of supporting evidence. Through this process, they will test and prove the viability, validity and applicability of their designs, and present them with an evidence-based audit of probable outcomes and success.

The course has been designed in consultation with students and employers in order to ensure that it meets the aspirations of our students and the demands of the contemporary employment environment. It aligns with the University’s Strategic Plan, the Education for Social Justice Framework and Student Partnership Agreement in promoting accessible and inclusive education in an environment that respects and values the identities of our students and accommodates diversity in all its forms. Consideration has been given to the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Art and Design (2019), the QAA Higher Education Qualifications Framework, and the University’s Academic Regulations.

The course’s aims are to:

encourage students to recognise the power impact and therefore the responsibility of designers;

embed thorough and effective research skills that will ensure the safety and efficacy of proposals and foster original thinking and designs;

foster creativity and imagination founded on a rigorous, enquiring, research-focused, synthetic and analytical approach to design that can deal with complex, ambiguous and uncertain scenarios;

equip graduates with a comprehensive understanding of current knowledge, thought and practice in their chosen discipline and its context, including contested areas of debate;

equip students with the skills, resourcefulness, resilience and desire to constantly review their understanding of their present and future contexts and practice;

ensure that graduates are future-proofed in respect of their professionalism, design strategies and abilities, and therefore also their career ambitions and prospects as responsible designers.

Upon completion of the course, graduates will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

1. acquire, assimilate and apply processes of investigative, analytical and speculative research and design methods;
2. evidence a comprehensive understanding of current knowledge, thought and practice for furniture design and its context, including theoretical frameworks, cultural traditions and contested areas of debate;

Cognitive Intellectual Abilities

3. deploy a developed design process founded on a rigorous, enquiring, research-focused, synthetic and analytical approach to design;
4. embrace creative, risk-taking, imaginative and speculative approaches to design for present and future scenarios, including for ambiguous and ill-defined contexts;
5. negotiate complex conditions, navigating a feasible route through competing creative, commercial, cultural and ethical interests;

Subject Specific Skills

6. deploy recognised industry-specific design and realisation materials, methods, tools, softwares and techniques to a fully professional standard;
7. communicate to a range of audiences fully developed furniture design proposals through an appropriate range of appropriate written and representational formats and techniques, including effectively collated and presented research material;

Transferable Skills

8. work productively and collaboratively as an individual and as part of a team, leading, working and negotiating effectively with others, planning, managing and auditing time, progress and resources effectively;
9. manage learning independently, demonstrating self-motivated attributes of critical enquiry, rigorous thought, creative and lateral thinking, developing strategies for continuous self-development;

Professionalism and Values:

10. demonstrate confidence, resilience, ambition and creativity and act as inclusive, collaborative and socially responsible practitioners and professionals in their discipline.

Art and Design (2019)

The assessment strategy for the course has been designed holistically, to ensure fairness, accessibility and inclusivity as well as manageable timing, workloads and clarity of expectations for students, and to avoid duplication of assessment of learning outcomes. Where appropriate, students are engaged as partners in the design of their assessments.

The assessment regimes for the modules and tasks are designed together with the briefs, prior to the start of the year, considering student, external examiner, professional collaborator and colleague feedback from previous instances. The requirements of briefs and their components, the assessment criteria, grading scheme and descriptors are published and explained to students at the start of the year and are designed to be used as consistently as possible, to avoid unnecessary complication.

In every case, there is required formative assessment and feedback prior to summative assessment at set points. This is recorded so that it can be used by both students and staff to track further progress and engage support where it is required. Feedback follows good pedagogic practice in that it is constructed as ‘feed-forward’, with a focus on specific actions and strategies as to how to improve, not only on what requires improvement.

Students are informed of the procedures for first, second and parity marking, and external examiner scrutiny of the assessment process and marks, to ensure that they understand and have confidence in the probity of the process and security of the final marks. Additionally, the course engages in Subject and School parity exercises to ensure that assessment standards are consistent.

Work-based learning is embedded in the course through live projects, industry visits, visiting professional speakers and participation in public events.

Many of the tutors and lecturers contributing to the course are practitioners who share their knowledge and experience with students throughout their course of study. The flexible research and practice-led model of delivery for the course means that evolving opportunities for work-related learning through collaboration with external companies, agencies, institutions, competitions and professionals are taken up as they arise.

Students’ understanding of professional standards and expectations builds as they progress from level to level. During their final year, students work towards completion of interview-ready professional portfolios of project work, exhibited at the annual summer show and associated events.

N/A

PT structure:

Year 1: DN7024 Research Methods: Success in Design, DN7025 Material Culture, DN7013 Design for Change or other 20 credit alternate core.

Year 2: DN7018 Design Project Development, DN7P02 Project as Professional Practice: Furniture Design.

Postgraduate Certificate (60 credits):
DN7024 Research Methods Success in Design (40) or DN7018 Design Project Development (40) plus any 20 credit module from the course diet.

Postgraduate Diploma (120 credits):
DN7024 Research Methods Success in Design (40), DN7018 Design Project Development (40), DN7025 Material Culture (20) plus any 20 credit module from the course diet.

Masters (180 credits):
DN7024 Research Methods Success in Design (40), DN7018 Design Project Development (40), DN7P02 Project as Professional Practice: Furniture Design (60), DN7025 Material Culture (20) plus any 20 credit module from the course diet.

The course’s principle of guiding learning through a practice-led curriculum promotes ongoing reflection and personal development. This is supported by regular formative feedback on work in progress that enables students to understand their progress and find opportunities for multiple and individualised routes to successful outcomes. Modules have interim points of review, which ensures that students, together with their tutors, can devise study strategies appropriate to individual learning styles, while ensuring monitoring of engagement and progress. At these interim formative assessment and feedback points, students reflect on their progress to date with their peers and course staff (with the benefit of feedback from professional partners), seek help where they identify the opportunity for improvement in learning strategies and outcomes, and make recommendations to themselves for future development. The feedback and student reflection is recorded and forms an action plan for the next period of study. This system is highly individualised, but also benefits from peer engagement in studio critiques.

The course provides one or more ‘live’ industry-partner set briefs each year. Through these, students have exposure to the expectations that employers and clients have of postgraduates. This enables the self-set Major Project to be designed to target the professional sector that students hope to enter upon graduation. Their final exhibition and assessment body of work will also be an interview-ready portfolio that represents their talents and interests to potential employers and clients. This ensures that personal development for career planning is effectively embedded in the course and suitable for the contemporary workplace.

The course provides a professional, practical and theoretical understanding of furniture and related design. Exposure to, and advice from leading practitioners is consistently available.

Graduates work as practitioners within furniture and related product design and in fields allied to both such as design consultancy, education, media, cultural institutions and policy. Those wishing to develop their research will be equipped and supported to apply to undertake a PhD.

Students can also benefit from support and guidance from the Careers and Employability services and the University’s business incubator unit, ‘Accelerator’

The creative industry in the UK is huge and about half of all those involved in the design sector work in London. Located in the creative hub of the East End, the School offers excellent opportunities for students and professionals to showcase cutting-edge design within related industries and venues. Through work placement and live projects, you will create design projects that are commercially and creatively relevant to global consumer markets.

Graduates of the course often aim to work as self-employed designers and consultants in the furniture sector, but may also work for design consultancies in London, across the UK and overseas. Graduates may work as in-house designers for manufacturing companies both large and small, including for contract furniture companies and other businesses that require design input such as exhibition and event companies, cultural institutions, interior design practices. Others gain employment as independent design consultants, working as suppliers of design expertise to a variety of businesses or continue within design research. Graduates also have career paths open in design research, design journalism, cultural institutions, education and marketing.

You will be required to have:

• a first class or strong upper second class degree, or equivalent, in a related subject

Applicants will also be expected to present a portfolio and provide a statement demonstrating their ambition for the subject area and for studying at postgraduate level.

Related employment or consultancy within the field can also be considered alongside the portfolio and statement.