---
title: Design Studio
page_type: course
track:
course_type:
feature_img: /assets/images/2022-23/t-1/design-studio-framing-design-interventions.jpg
img_caption: 
faculty: 
    - oscar-tomico
    - mariana-quintero
    - tomas-diez
    - jonathan-minchin
---

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## Syllabus

MDEF Research, Design and Development studios aim to take research areas of interest and initial project ideas into an advanced concretion point, and execution plan. The studio structure in three terms could be understood as follows:

**TERM 1 Research**: Understanding what it means to design for emergent futures. Analyzing the past and finding weak signals. References, state of the art. Identifying areas of interest. Experimenting from the first-person perspective.

**TERM 2 Design**: Forming the present through interventions in the real world. Building the foundations of your design space, forming strategic partnerships. Applying knowledge into practice through iterative prototyping. Testing ideas and prototypes in the real world.

**TERM 3 Development**: Refining interventions and identifying desirable futures. Establishing roadmaps for the construction of emergent narratives.. Communicating and disseminating your project through speculative design.

The first term Design Studio aims to create a solid ground for the students to start developing their projects. Weekly activities will be set to interlink results from the courses like their mappings, cartographies, experiments, 1st person design activities, prototypes, with their personal development plan. In order to propose an area of intervention at the end of the trimester. The Design Studio activities will consist of presentations, group activities, short exercises and personal coaching. The specific goals are the following:

- To develop a critical position in the student’s design practice.
- Define possible areas of intervention, based on the Atlas of the Week Signals.
- Prototype an alpha version of the design space and iterate.
- To build personal and collective repositories of resources.

## Deliverables

- Post on your website with your new extended workspace

- Collaborative map of projects, resources, news, and opportunities for interventions … that can populate your physical working space and a plan on how to share relevant information between all of you on-line.

- A reflection on how you are documenting and communicating your work.

- A video which can include multiple ways of video journaling (interviews, personal reflections, activities, ...).

- Document the collective design intervention, analyze it and reflect on the findings.

- Planning of the exhibition, space allocation and special needs.

- A series of prototypes presented in a collective design space and a personal video of no more than 3 minutes (answering the question what is your updated fight),

- 5 high resolution images of the highlights of your Design Studio work during the term, a high resolution image of your personal and Collective design space and the first chapters of your Thesis Draft which represent each one of the deliverables developed during the term:

**Chapter 0**: What is your fight?. Vision and Identity. Personal development and Collaboration Plan.

**Chapter 1**: Research through Design Toolbox.

**Chapter 2**: Framing a collective Design Space based on AoWS, Multiscalar Design Space and State of the Art. Personally  reflect on your area of interest and an area of intervention.

**Chapter 3**: First interventions (Experiments, Pilots and first collective intervention): Description and results.

## Faculty

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