Industrial Design (MFA)
The New School
Key Information
Campus location
New York, USA
Languages
English
Study format
On-Campus
Duration
2 years
Pace
Full time
Tuition fees
USD 1,810 / per credit
Application deadline
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Earliest start date
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Scholarships
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Introduction
Parsons School of Design in New York City – recently named the Best School for Art and Design in the US and ranked 2nd in the world – has offered innovative approaches to design education since its founding in 1896. Today, Parsons is the only major American art and design school within a comprehensive university: The New School. At Parsons, you can master establish established creative practices and spark new ones while studying across all university disciplines.
About
Parsons’ Master of Fine Arts in Industrial Design program offers an innovative two-year, 60-credit full-time graduate curriculum that prepares students to negotiate the seemingly contradictory forces at play in the growing product design industry. Students explore the way goods can be produced in both localized contexts (a “making in place” approach, which relies on regionalized needs and constraints) and globalized contexts (employing design principles focusing on universal needs). Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments includes graduate students in Architecture, Interior Design, and Lighting Design, creating a unique learning community.
Program highlights
- 60-credit studio-based and research-oriented curriculum.
- Explore habitable space and ornament as a force for change, a means of environmental stewardship, and a tool for shaping experiences.
- Analyze the relationship between human behavior and perception of the interior, using NYC as an urban laboratory.
- Learn from a faculty of distinguished practicing professionals at the school where formal interior design education began.
Curriculum
Curriculum
The MFA Industrial Design curriculum balances competing for interests such as economical production and sustainability, consumerism, social and environmental improvement, and global and local production, investigating ways to integrate and reconcile these forces as a whole. In their second semester, MFA students explore limited-run making in New York City, and in the third semester, they can investigate large-scale global production through virtual collaborations or study abroad at sites including Parsons Paris. A specialized thesis project offers opportunities to develop designs that advance — or challenge — industrial design theory and practice.