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Different course options

Study mode

Full time

Duration

2 years

Start date

22-SEP-25

Key information
DATA SOURCE : IDP Connect

Qualification type

MA - Master of Arts

Subject areas

Furniture Design

Course type

Taught

Course Summary

MA Design: Furniture focuses on your individual design practice and will broaden your career and research horizons.

Course overview

MA Design (Furniture) will develop your creative abilities, imagination and expertise. Framed within one course, we use design to explore these evolving disciplines, embracing ideas of practice beyond traditional definitions. This creates a range of hybrid practices disrupting assumptions around design, craft and production.

Your creative focus will evolve through a structured process of research, design ideation, exploration, development and evaluation. Encouraging you to expand skills intellectually, contextually and practically, extending and exploiting design strategies from your own and other disciplines. To question and test ideas through teamwork, collaborations and group critiques.

We embody design as a process and a practice of transformation. We view design as research in and for practice, as modes of thinking, as ways of communicating to diverse audiences.

The sustainability and ethicality of production is an urgent challenge to each of our disciplines. We are interested how this challenge shapes all forms of manufacturing – from master craftsmanship, artisanship and the hand-made to factory production and contemporary technologies. In single artefacts, mass-market delivery and all stages in-between.

The nature of production and consumption constantly changes, in the face of complex social, economic, environmental challenges and technological innovation. What could or should be the role of the ceramic, furniture or jewellery designer in the twenty first century? By engagement, reflection, negotiation and evolution, we challenge you to shape the future.

Re-framing a discipline or industry, places emphasis on strategic awareness within design and requires a set of responsive, generative and critical skills to complement your creative process and material knowledge.

We encourage you to question who you are as a designer. How will you shape your discipline? Will you design for a market-led focus, collaboratively with industry partners, regeneratively for a community of practice or identify ways forward as a thought and practice leader?

We are committed to developing ethical design practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.

Modules

Unit 1 introduces issues and topics relevant to ceramics, jewellery or furniture, including research methodologies and techniques. These will help you orientate your practice within the course, and to develop contextual, critical and research skills at the onset of MA learning. You will be designing out ideas from day one as you research. You will work collaboratively with students from other courses and examine some of the key cultural and theoretical ideas impacting design.

Tuition fees

UK fees
Course fees for UK students

For this course (per year)

£7,680

International fees
Course fees for EU and international students

For this course (per year)

£20,505

Entry requirements

The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows: an honours degree Or an equivalent EU/international qualification.

University information

University of the Arts London (UAL) is one of the world’s leading and most prestigious arts universities, maintaining an internationally renowned list of alumni. Located in London, it is ideally positioned for students wishing to study a postgraduate qualification and gain valuable connections to a thriving creative sector. UAL ranks in the top 30 universities in the UK (Complete University Guide, 2025). With modern campus sites spread across...more