Images: Matthew Rezac. Courtesy of SVA Department of Design Research, Writing and Criticism.

MA in Design Research, Writing and Criticism

School of Visual Arts (SVA)

School of Visual Arts
136 West 21 Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011

[email protected]

designresearch.sva.edu

The SVA Department of Design Research, Writing and Criticism is now accepting applications for its new one-year MA program for fall 2014. Significant scholarship support is available to all successful candidates.

Combining the rigor of its predecessor, D-Crit, and the velocity of the department’s annual Design Writing & Research Summer Intensive, the SVA MA in Design Research offers a high-impact, targeted program of study well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. With a two-semester, eight-month timeframe (September to May), the SVA MA in Design Research provides an intensive immersion in techniques for researching and interpreting design, its contexts and consequences.

The MA in Design Research features an unparalleled core faculty, comprised of celebrated curators, editors, critics, and designers, such as MoMA Senior Curator of Design and Architecture Paola Antonelli; design consultant and curator Murray Moss; The New York Times culture reporter Robin Pogrebin; and urban design critic Karrie Jacobs. With more than 30 guest lecturers and critics visiting the department per semester—including The New York Times senior critic Michael Kimmelman, author and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen, New Journalism progenitor Gay Talese, biographer Deborah Solomon, architecture curator Pedro Gadanho, urban planning designers Interboro Partners, MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, and British design critic Rick Poynor—the program takes particular care to connect students to inspirational mentors, potential employers, and colleagues.

The department has its own floor in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Each student has a desk space within an open-plan, light-filled workspace. The program takes advantage of its central New York location with frequent visits to the city’s design collections, archives, libraries, design and architecture studios, SVA design departments, and behind-the-scenes access to exhibitions-in-the-making, new buildings, and urban planning developments.

The program’s curriculum charts the cutting edge of design practice and is responsive to exciting developments in the media landscape. Through studying images, objects, and environments, and learning ways to construct multi-format narratives that bring them to life, students will be amply prepared to launch or develop research-related careers in publishing, education, museums, institutes, design practice, entrepreneurship, and more. Alumni have used their studies in this department to launch careers at companies and institutions such as Facebook, Metropolis, Vitra Design Museum, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, Rizzoli, RISD, Institute of Play, Museum of Modern Art, The Glass House, Rutgers University, Project Projects, Ziba, and Storefront for Art and Architecture.

To arrange an appointment with the program’s founding chair, Alice Twemlow, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or +1 212 592 2228.

> via artandeducation.net