Start semester
70 505 Design Studio
Emnenavn på Norwegian Bokmål:
Design studio
Credits:
24
Course code:
70 505
Level of study:
Master
Teaching semester:
2018 Autumn
Assessment semester:
2018 Autumn
Language of instruction:
English
Person in charge
Harald Skulberg
Håkan Edeholt
Mosse Sjaastad
Natalia Lucia Agudelo Alvarez
Einar Sneve Martinussen
Kjetil Nordby
Required prerequisite knowledge
Passed foundation level (BA-level) courses at AHO or equivalent, 180 ECTS.
A third semester Master course (only available for students in their final year). Open for all design fields, but students are required to follow up and go in depth within their previous chosen specialisation/field in which they can document advanced design skills through a portfolio and application.
Recommended prerequisite knowledge
This course builds on the design skills and methods learnt across the previous Foundation and Master courses. In “Design Studio” students and teachers integrate and push these skills and mindsets to create rich projects with a high degree of professionally. For students who want to take part in “Design Studio” a strong sense of curiosity, experimental outlooks and independence are therefore required. “Design Studio” allows students to tailor their own personal development as a designer in preparation for their diploma.
Course content
“Design Studio” is an advanced Master course where the students will develop projects across themes and partners curated by the Institute of Design. These can be connected to research projects, external partners or emerging problematics within the field of design. The ambition for this course is to develop stand-out projects where students go in depth into the issues they chose to work with, and create high level outcomes. The core values of the course are exploration and professionalism – meaning that the course encourages the development of reflection, criticality and new knowledge about emerging fields, but also has the ambition of developing high quality deliveries and communication.
In this course students will have a large degree of freedom and responsibility as to how their projects are developed. ‘Design studio’ is a place for students to integrate the knowledge they have gained throughout their education and work towards exploration, professionalism and specialisation. A central part of the studio course is to develop project-experience and knowledge about how different forms of larger design projects can be structured and executed.
Students work individually or in small groups. Each project will be followed throughout the semester by a supervisor and typically, a partner. Partners and supervisors depend on the specialisations and/or themes that the projects take up. Each track supervisor will be responsible for the students that choose to follow his or her track. The track may consist of one long project or several projects.
The main teaching structure is mentoring on project level and the ongoing evaluation of progress. There is a common structure for milestones and core-deliverables throughout the course (development of project descriptions and plans, documentation and deliverables, and main presentations). Co-learning is central across the projects, and students will be involved in developing research, lectures and course-materials for the whole group.
Projects will come out of curated themes and partners developed by the Institute of design or from research topics across the institute’s research projects. It is also possible for students to suggest their own themes. Projects can both be done as specialisations towards specific fields or in inter-disciplinary groups, where students from industrial design, service design and interaction-design work together.
Learning outcome
KNOWLEDGE
- The core knowledge outcome of the course is to integrate and mature the processes and methods learnt across the Master of Design.
- Further, students are expected to develop domain-specific knowledge across their projects.
- Knowledge about how advanced design projects can be structured and organised.
SKILLS
- Develop and mature individual skillsets as designers.
- In “Design Studio” students develop and expand core project-handling skills. Including scoping, research, project-description, time-management and communication.
GENERAL COMPETENCE
Across “Design Studio” the goal is to develop the maturity of the students’ design competence and skills. This is done by both focusing on exploration and professionality on an advanced project-level.
Working and learning activities
The main activities of the course will be project- and specialisation-specific. Across the course there will be a focus on learning project planning, developing and scoping. The course is run in a studio setting, and co-learning across the projects, with some shared lectures and presentations etc, are important. The students will be required to make and present one topic specific “lecture” to the whole “design Studio:”
Work effort:
Students need to present and submit all projects, documentations and presentations in order to be assessed for the course. Students also need to schedule their own mentoring sessions.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supervision talks | Not required |
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project assignment | Individual | Pass / fail | Students accepted to the different Design Studio tracks must define their own learning outcome together with the track responsible, after deciding their focus area. This will be the basis for their final evaluation. The assessment method is to be decided by the track responsible in dialog with the student. |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Attendance | |
| Workshops | |
| Evaluation (mid term) |