Design Investigations

Head: Univ.-Prof. Anab Jain
 

Design is more than an industry, or a product. Design is our everyday and our future. At Design Investigations, we equip students to become designers of tomorrow.
 
Design Investigations is a multi-disciplinary design education that builds on a history of industrial design, to include speculative design, ecological design, and design futures in the study program.

We encourage our students to experiment, play and question different topics, as well as interrogate the social, cultural, environmental and technological
implications of their work in the world.

Our focus is on design-through-making. In the program, students innovate through material and aesthetic experimentation, working hands-on with emerging technologies like AI, prototyping regenerative designs and building more-thanhuman futures.

We instigate new ways to think about design. We invite our students to explore the how, what, why and for whom of design. Rather than confine a student's outlook to traditional design history, practice and theory, we consider everything from data to politics, artificial intelligence to biology as part of the designer’s playing field.
This is a course for the curious, and the driven, an opportunity to question convention and shape better futures through design.
During their time with us, students will…

DEVELOP TANGIBLE DESIGN SKILLS TRANSFERABLE ACROSS INDUSTRY
• Dive into future-relevant topics, with studio briefs covering everything from the future of food, AI and emergent technologies, to energy futures, democracy, counterfactual history, biodiversity, and non-human perspectives.
 
• Engage in both individual and group projects, collaborating with senior students in our Vertical Studio structure.
• Acquire practical skills in specialist areas including worldbuilding, filmmaking, sound design, speculative design, material prototyping, regenerative food production, and electronics.
 
LEARN FROM AND ALONGSIDE LEADING PLAYERS IN DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, ARTS, ECOLOGY AND MORE
 
• Our workshops are led by renowned designers and industry leaders including Lucy McRae, Rimini Protokoll, Saeed Taji Farouky, Sara Hendren, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez.
 
• Attend guest lectures by world-leading experts and international practitioners. Previous speakers have included Genevieve Bell, Monika Farukuoye, Resolve Collective, Kenric McDowell, Nick Foster, Thomas Thwaites, Feifei Zhou, Dan Hill, James Bridle, Stuart Candy, and others.

• Engage in external projects with clients and partners such as Google Research, Google Artists & Machine Intelligence Group, the Natural History Museum Wien, Werkraum Bregenzerwald and the London Design Biennale.

• Professional internships and Erasmus semesters give students exposure and firsthand experience from various practices and educational environments. Past internships include L’Oréal, Atelier Iris van Herpen, BMW, IDEO, mischer'traxler studio, Superflux, Biofaction and Studio PSK.

WHERE DESIGN INVESTIGATIONS TAKES YOU
 
• Our students graduate with a highly desirable set of practical skills and critical thinking capacities that take them into roles such as designer, technologist, curator, researcher and creative consultant, in fields of design, tech, advertising, academia and more. Many of our alumni have gone on to run their own businesses and design studios.
 
Admission Process
 
Digital registration and portfolio submission from 11th – 26th 12.00 p.m. (midday) January 2024 via the central registration tool of the University of Applied Arts Vienna https://application.uni-ak.ac.at.

We evaluate students based on a portfolio submission, however we don’t ask for what you might conventionally assume to be a portfolio. Rather we request that your ‘portfolio’ consist of between 1 to 3 images representing you, your skills, interests and experience. We can't wait to see your ideas!

Following your portfolio submission, the exam takes place from 27th February to 29th Febuary 2024 between 10:00 -18:00. You will work on a number of engaging design-related tasks, followed by interviews with Anab Jain and tutors of the department.

To find out more about our admission process, please visit: https://designinvestigations.at/admission/

Contact

Location
main floor
Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2
A-1010 Wien
basement
Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2
A-1010 Wien