Eco-Social Design

Overview

The Master in Eco-Social Design at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano  is not only about more eco-efficient products and services, but is striving for future-viable modes of production, consumption and life – for sustainable economies and cultures. Based on these general aims and values the design of products, spaces, processes, interactive applications and of cross-media communication is understood as an integrated task. Design is a catalyst of change.

With your projects you try to approach today's issues effectively and/or co-design concrete practices and visions for tomorrow. You are encouraged to experiment with alternative practices of collaboration and co-creation. The overarching goal: Good life for all! –  empowered and facilitated by excellent design.

You will learn how to use instruments of diverse design practices and research, besides incorporating into your creative work also perspectives and competences borrowed from social sciences and economics, and from sectors such as: business, activism, technology and the crafts. This equips you to develop your ways to approach complex issues with reflection, creativity and pragmatism.

You have possibility to set your personal focus, by choosing what to deepen within the rich set of design disciplines and sciences offered in the study program.

Career opportunities

The MA Eco-Social Design supports students to invent and co-develop the professional practice that fits with them and with today's realities, challenges and potentials.

The variety of jobs in the traditional domain of design is already very broad and continues to expand. Eco-Social Design offers the possibility to set up your own design agency, work for interdisciplinary design agencies and/or collaborate with partners who are committed to environmental, social and political progress, such as NGOs, foundations, and public institutions, citizen groups, cooperatives and social enterprises.

The expanding market of organic, eco-friendly and ethical products and services, the sharing economy and other innovative “alternative economies” create emergent fields for work opportunities to our graduates. For example, Community Economies and Commoning provide exciting contexts to contribute to, and to benefit from, new modes of work, production and consumption.