Master's in Social Design

Design Academy Eindhoven, located in the Netherlands, stands at the forefront of design education with a global reputation for nurturing creative thinkers and innovators. Renowned for its avant-garde approach, the academy places a strong emphasis on pushing boundaries and challenging conventional design norms. Students at Design Academy Eindhoven embark on a transformative journey, exploring a diverse range of design disciplines that go beyond aesthetics to address societal challenges and create meaningful impact. The academy's commitment to fostering an environment of experimentation and interdisciplinary collaboration sets it apart. With a faculty comprised of industry leaders and visionary designers, students are exposed to cutting-edge concepts and real-world applications. Design Academy Eindhoven not only shapes the future of design but also cultivates a community of forward-thinkers who contribute to shaping the world through the lens of innovative and sustainable design solutions.

The Master in Social Design focusses on new social roles for designers attuned to contemporary ecological and social challenges. As a practice, Social Design embodies genuine care for the world. In the Masters, we understand design as a medium at the intersection of ethics, politics, and ecology, serving society’s deepest aspirations. We mobilise design’s worldmaking capacity toward radical forms of conviviality. Social Design emphasises the designers’ responsibility in the reorganisations of society. Designers can set conditions for opposing, maintaining, disrupting, or legitimising existing structures. They have a role in the struggles for social and ecological justice, animal rights and the rights of nature, depatriarchalisation, decolonisation, and antiracism. Yet, while we acknowledge the inclination of designers in intervening in these struggles, we also question the overconfidence in their ability to ‘solve’ problems. Design is often part of the problems that it claims it can solve.