SVA MA Design Research
136 W 21st St, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011
designresearch@sva.edu
(212) 592-2228
SVA MA Design Research
136 W 21st St, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011
designresearch@sva.edu
(212) 592-2228
The MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism provides intensive instruction in techniques for analyzing design and its cultural and environmental implications.
The program combines humanities-oriented critical thinking and journalistic tools to produce writing and editorial content intended to inform and engage broad audiences. The rigorous one-year MA with thesis offers a high-impact, targeted program well suited to the circumstances of both established professionals and recent graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. Significant scholarship funding is available for both full-time and part-time students.
Here in the SVA Department of Design Research, Writing & Criticism we study design in all its manifestations, with a pronounced interest in its contexts and consequences. This means we don’t just focus on designed products or buildings, but also on the infrastructure that connects them, and the policy that shapes them. We try to look at what happens after a designed product is launched. We go beyond the glossy images supplied by the manufacturer to discover how things actually get used and discarded, and how they impinge upon our daily reality.
The program’s curriculum charts the cutting edge of design practice and is responsive to exciting developments in the media landscape.
Through workshops, seminars, lectures, and site visits, students examine the issues and policies that shape the designed environment; learn research methods, reporting techniques, and theoretical models; and experiment with a range of media vehicles for communicating their research, including writing, podcasting, and public speaking.
Each student will identify an individual research territory to explore during the year, culminating in a thesis portfolio of written and applied media projects. Degree candidates must successfully complete 30 credits, including all required courses, with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0. A residency of two academic semesters is required.
This seminar exposes students to key issues in cultural theory and criticism, with a view to the study and interpretation of designed space and objects. Special consideration will be given to the development of critical positions that serve as a lens for reading the complexity of the built environment within a larger context. Sessions will focus on key texts drawn from disciplines that include philosophy, critical theory, art criticism, cultural studies, anthropology and media studies. These readings offer different perspectives on cultural economies, politics and systems of meaning, with a goal of helping students define their own critical framework for research.
Through group meetings and one-on-one consultations, each student will choose a thesis topic that is innovative and rich enough to withstand extended inquiry. Students will be guided through the process of identifying problems, developing critical questions, and developing primary and secondary sources as they embark upon research for their thesis portfolio. Students will explore research methodologies and resources related to design research as they develop a thesis research question and build a research dossier to support their writing.
The history of design can be best understood when explored through a spectrum of experiences: makers and users, intentions and consequences, experiences and interpretations. Design influences culture at every level, at the level of individual behavior, the construction of community and our foundational systems and structures—businesses, governments, civic institutions, systems of belief. To what extent do we understand the underlying belief systems that drive those systems? As design writers, what responsibility do we have to understand, investigate, critique and expound on our analysis of the larger social dynamics at play? In this course, we consider ways of approaching design history. Beginning with an introduction to the field of design history itself, our episodic structure zooms in on case studies across various periods and types of design: from the chair to the room, exhibitions, graphics, and digital technology. While examining this handful of moments within an expansive field, students are encouraged to consider relevance to contemporary discourse as well as biases and gaps—both here and in “the canon.” Together we will discuss how ideas in history inform design thinking and making, and attempt to understand how we construct cultural narrative and meaning through history. Reading and writing about design requires a broad social lens focused on those whose stories are often left untold alongside those who have gained a megaphone to amplify their voices.
For this course we will visit iconic New York City public places as a group and try to understand how they came to exist, how they’ve evolved over time and how they change. We’ll focus on places that are hybrid, both public and private, including privately-financed public places. Students will also visit and analyze other kinds of places, some truly public and others privately-owned places that function as public ones, such as hotel lobbies and office tower atria, as well as traditionally public places like libraries that are increasingly dependent on private funding. Students will be asked to evaluate every aspect of their design and consider whether they serve the public, or which public they serve. They’ll have the opportunity to meet designers of public places and those who advocate for their creation and maintenance. Assignments will include readings on the history and culture of New York’s public places, critiques of those places and student presentations. students will be required to write one critical essay and make a final presentation, which will also exist in written form. The goal is to help students develop and refine their voices as critics and thoughtful observers of the urban landscape.
Students in this course examine the building blocks of researching and writing feature-length nonfiction narratives. We begin with a warm-up workshop focused on objective versus subjective approaches to writing about design. The next segment focuses on interviewing skills, while the final segment asks students to develop narratives from material found in selected archives. Students will explore interviewing skills and best practices, conducting several interviews to produce a written profile piece. A selection of New York’s most significant and esoteric public and private archives, collections and libraries will be visited, and students will practice constructing compelling visual and written narratives based on individual discoveries and research.
This course explores writing as we move progressively through various forms—from short descriptions to brief reviews and news features. Students will work on writing about visual culture and developing skills for visual, object-based and research-driven writing. The course will highlight the possibilities and limitations of each form, and students are encouraged to explore the same subject at multiple lengths to see the possibilities each form allows.
Expanding the focus of DRG-5040, Research and Writing I, this course will include longer-form writing, exploring how writing shifts from shorter pieces to long reviews and, ultimately, the essay. We will probe style and voice and how the two develop as writing expands in length. Emphasis is given to techniques that use language vividly and precisely in writing and to visual objects and research. Distinguished writers and editors will visit and share their approaches and ideas to writing. Each session will have two elements—a seminar where we discuss the work of other writers and critics as a guide to our own, and a workshop where we critically discuss each student’s writing. Key to writing is reading and considering other writers’ ideas from established critics to our colleagues. Important to the class is an open approach to ideas, to points of view, to interpretation, and to looking and exploring.
Old-time radio was often referred to as “the theater of the mind,” and the saying remains true; the intimacy of sound—one voice speaking directly to you—has power unmatched by other media. And in the midst of this new renaissance, audio journalism proves itself even more relevant for 21-century writers and content-makers. Even a visual realm like design has proven itself to be a rich topic for podcasts—see the success of Roman Mars’s show “99% Invisible.” In this course you will learn to create your own audio journalism that relates to design in the broadest sense. Your options for subject matter will be wide-ranging; what you will learn is how to communicate those ideas most effectively through sound. You’ll learn how to write for the ear rather than the eye; how to interview and gather sound; how to edit and mix audio; how to create narrative arcs and effective pacing. You’ll learn how to use sound to help set scenes and tell a story. You’ll learn how to ask good questions and pick good tape. And you will discover that it really is possible to make interesting, provocative and entertaining audio stories about design, architecture and the visual arts.
The thesis explores a particular research theme connected to design, architecture, or visual culture and that makes an original and significant contribution to knowledge. Working in consultation with their thesis advisors, students will develop detailed research plans, identify useful archives and sources, analyze the results of their research and develop a thesis portfolio, including a reflection essay, research dossier, podcast and 5,000 words of writing. Students will meet as a group for workshops and individually with their advisors during the writing and editing phases.
This seminar/workshop offers a key element toward completing your thesis. Together we will pose questions of writing and of research, and explore how to integrate the two. We will analyze various essays to examine diverse research methodologies, the styles of writing and forms of knowledge that emerge from them, and experiment with developing and implementing our own research approaches. The purpose is to craft inquiry into text through description and analysis in pursuit of writing that is vibrant, truthful, informed and accessible. In each class session, one student will present an assigned essay following a set rubric. The presenting student will also share a selection of their own thesis, written using the research methods described in the assigned essay. Presentation of essays include each student’s own experience pursuing the described research methodology. The class will discuss the methodology as it relates to the thesis topic.
Over the course of the three segments of the research and writing curriculum, we have learned how to develop a position, to structure it with effective text, and fortify it with research and interviews. This final segment will look at the roles that style and copyediting play in connecting that text and position to a public. To do that, we will create our own newsroom: each student will edit a piece from another student, working with their respective writer to take a manuscript from its rough state to a publication-ready finish. We will examine the structure of the editorial process and which resources to use at each step along the way. The aim of the course is not to imbibe and memorize the entire Chicago Manual of Style or the forest of other style guides, but rather understand what they are, why they matter and how to use them.
As students prepare to disembark from our program, they will want to apply the skills they have learned in coursework to real-world endeavors, and to think creatively about how they can translate their thesis research into a variety of media formats. In this course we will focus on developing strategies and methods for communicating your work to different audiences. Students will be presented with a series of prompts before class. The beginning of each class session will be spent developing responses to those prompts, and then workshopping prompts with each other and guest speakers. There may be short advanced readings related to each upcoming session. This course is designed to open students’ minds to the creative and entrepreneurial aspect of the design media and cultural landscape, and to compel students to examine new modes of communication and expression that will be of use to them in future endeavors. The bulk of the work for this course will be done in class, drawing upon students’ existing research and writing. Therefore, students are expected to respond to prompts in class, and engage in conversation as a group and with the guest speakers.
Every week students will meet individually or as a group with their thesis advisors during the writing and editing phases of the thesis. Material discussed will be the assignments from the concurrent research and development courses.
The Design Research, Writing and Criticism Department is pleased to offer a two-week Summer Intensive aimed at those who would like to refine their skills as thinkers, researchers and storytellers.
Through a robust daily schedule of seminars, lectures and workshops, the intensive offers students and working professionals a unique opportunity to study with a faculty composed of leading writers and editors, and engage in conversation with prominent designers, architects and urban planners.
In addition to instruction from our renowned faculty, participants will receive desk space in our bright and airy studio in the heart of Manhattan. So if you’re in the New York area or would like to be, we invite you to join us in the department this June.
On-site perks include:
24/7 studio desk and printer access
In-person studio visits to New York design firms
Roundtable talk with DCrit faculty member and design writer Steven Heller
Opportunity to meet with publication-in-residence New York Review of Architecture staff members
Meet fellow participants and explore the city
Free access to SVA-partner museums
For more information, visit our Summer Intensive page.