Textile / Surface Design

The course Texile and Surface Design is divided into a four-year Bachelor course and a one-year Masters. The Bachelor course begins with a one-year interdisciplinary arts foundation course completed together with students from other courses.

The following three years focus on the design of surfaces in a wide range of contexts. These include three-dimensional bodies, interior and exterior spaces and product surfaces. In addition to working with traditional and new techniques and technologies for designing textile and non-textile two-dimensional surfaces, students also focus on their subject’s interplay with related disciplines – architecture, fashion, industrial design, media, visual art, etc. Social issues are also examined; whose everyday life should be taken as a reference point? How do colours and fabrics correlate to various attitudes to life and different lifestyles? How do trends work? What is the role of economic and global issues in a textile designer’s work? Surfaces form a link to many different fields of application, and can be the basis for developing new design opportunities and skills. This course fosters a design approach that combines pragmatic professionalism, critical thinking, trans-disciplinary exchange and aesthetic autonomy.

The Masters builds on the Bachelors course and emphasises "Material & Style". This includes focussing on a considered use of materials which is both aesthetically and technologically up to date, combined with an integration into the design process of accurate perceptions of contemporary cultural movements and a view of this work as part of the interaction between personal identity and social change. The course aims to guide students as they further develop their own identity as designers in a systematic way, in part by working on a socially relevant, forward-looking project.

Admission requirements:
Applicants for this course must demonstrate an artistic aptitude, have previous vocational training and the general qualification for university entrance. Artistic aptitude will be tested in an examination.

Final qualifications:
Bachelor of Arts / Textile and Surface Design
Master of Arts / Textile and Surface Design (expected to begin in the winter semester 2012/13)