Sustainable Design MA

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Top reasons to choose this course

• A transformative learning experience – Students consistently rate this course highly in the national Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES), describing it as transformative, intellectually challenging, and personally supportive.
• Centred on your interests and ambitions – This course is shaped around your passions, enabling you to explore the issues that matter most to you through design-led research. You’ll develop outcomes that support you in achieving your personal and professional goals.

• A springboard to PhD study – Many of our graduates pursue fully funded PhDs in the UK and internationally, building directly on the work they began during their MA. The course provides a strong foundation for research careers and academic progression.
•  A diverse, purpose-driven community – Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary cohort of students from a wide range of backgrounds, united by a shared commitment to sustainability and social change. You’ll be supported in becoming a critical thinker and astute professional who uses design to make a difference.
• Brighton: A city for change – Brighton is one of Europe’s most progressive and creative cities, a natural home for sustainable design. With its thriving grassroots activism, cultural diversity, and sustainability initiatives, the city provides daily inspiration and a real-world testing ground for your ideas.
• Hands-on, critically engaged practice – You’ll learn through a blend of hands-on making and critical reflection, supported by:
  - world-leading design archives
  - fully equipped workshops and studios
  - facilities for prototyping, print, and digital visualisation.
  

Whether your practice is experimental or applied, you’ll have the space and tools to develop it. 

• Learn from leading voices – Our guest lecturers comprise designers, researchers, policymakers, and activists who are at the forefront of practice and theory. Their insights help expand your perspective on the role of design in complex systems.
• Learning beyond the studio – Course activities include curated visits to local and national sites of interest. Recent examples include:
  - The Knepp Rewilding Estate
  - The Keep Archive
  - Design Museum London
  - Events during the Brighton Festival and Fringe

These experiences connect your learning to the world around you.

• Collaborate with leading researchers – You'll have the opportunity to work alongside staff and researchers from internationally recognised centres, including:
  - The Centre for Design History
  - The Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender
  - The Centre for Arts and Wellbeing

Together, you’ll explore how design can lead social, cultural, and ecological transformation.

• Join a global alumni network – Our graduates go on to work in education, design, charities, policy, and research across the UK and internationally. As part of our growing alumni community, you’ll stay connected through events, collaborations, and shared values.

Areas of study

Modules

Core modules

• Design Research Practices

  In this module you will learn to understand research in a way that’s specific to design. It starts from the idea that research, including scientific research, is a specific form of design activity and that design can influence research and vice versa. You will rearticulate the design expertise you’re already developing and apply this to research. You will also learn how to combine design research and practice in your own way.

• Situate

  This module introduces established and emerging principles, theories and themes in design. It will help you to situate your work within modern design trends and global issues and discover and develop what motivates you in your field. Themes covered may include sustainability discourses, power and politics, decolonising design, equity and equality, systemic complexity and creating change through design.

• Radical Modes of Design Culture and Practice

  Design is a diverse and continually changing discipline and this module introduces and critically examines modes of design, exploring how people think, create and use design in practice. You will explore how design can reimagine current practices to establish new codes and ways of working that engage the ‘radical’ changes needed to address sustainability challenges.

• Design Lab

  In this module, you will develop your approaches to design within your specialisation through experimental practices. The module provides a reflective and productive environment within which you can develop, realise and critique new and innovative design concepts, theoretical positions and practice-based research methods. This will support you in confidently and critically developing individually defined and research-informed design practices.

• Design: Masterwork

  This module takes the form of a self-directed design research project which requires you to employ the experiences, methods, skills and mastery gained throughout your studies so far. The research-led design process will enable you to create new directions for your design specialisation, challenge existing expertise and develop insights relevant to your professional ambitions. A key feature of this module is to prepare you for professional life after graduation.

Options*

• Distributed Design and Production

  This module will provide an introduction to key ideas, technologies, designs, business models, organisations and networks that could contribute to low-carbon, low-impact and locally resilient ways of production and consumption. You will be supported in identifying opportunities to develop project proposals for specific locations and needs, informed by discourse, research, design, making and experimentation.

• Sustainable Design: Future(s)

  In this module you will develop your project in a structured way, identifying the factors central to your ideas and seeing where these connect with other elements. You will learn how to identify key points for change and use communication and interaction to bring abstract ideas to life. Specific content will change year on year, but themes covered may include complex systems thinking and theories of uncertainty.

• Critical Readings in Spatial Design

  In this module you will explore historical, theoretical and practical issues in architectural, spatial and urban design. You’ll reflect on your own ideas and experiences while considering how these issues relate to different cultural contexts. Seminars will address issues of disciplinary context, including the interrelationship of architecture with technical, political, social and cultural fields.

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Facilities

Facilities and workshops are supported by full-time specialist technicians and include:

• dedicated studio spaces for each group and programme
• specialist model-making and construction workshops with equipment for fabrication in wood, metal, plastics, resins and textiles
• photographic studios and darkroom
• digital fabrication facilities including laser cutting and 3D printing
• rapid prototyping, 5-axis milling and CNC routing facilities
• PC and Mac computer suites with software including Adobe suite (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator), Vectorworks, Autodesk suite, Rhino, Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D and Premiere
• in-house reprographic department 
• wide range of surveying and audiovisual equipment available for loan.

Staff profile

Dr Tom Ainsworth, co-course leader

Dr Tom Ainsworth became course leader for the Sustainable Design MA in 2015. 

Tom is fascinated by design and seeks opportunities to expand and diversify the discipline. His interests are in disciplinary ways of knowing and, in particular, in contexts of sustainable futures, interdisciplinarity and collaboration. His research activities seek to achieve change through design. His research embraces the shapeshifting nature of sustainability discourses and is generally conducted in collaboration with colleagues from other disciplines.

Tom is an active researcher, PhD supervisor and peer reviewer. He has published work in international journals, including the International Journal for Art and Design Education, BMC Medical Education and the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development. 

Read the full profile of design academic Tom Ainsworth.

Dr Sally Sutherland, co-course leader

Sally has been teaching on the Sustainable Design MA since 2018. 

Sally has 15 years professional experience working in lighting, spatial and product design and development. She is a socially-active design researcher with an interest in the impact of design on everyday life and inequalities, and design for individual and planetary health. 

Read the full profile of lecturer, doctoral student and designer Sally Sutherland.

Find out about our other staff.

• Dr Ben Sweeting
• Dr Sarah Stevens
• Dr Damon Taylor
• James Tooze
• Duncan Baker-Brown

Student views

Bea Maggipinto

“The MASD has been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life! I have learnt so much from both an academic and human perspective. In-class discussions have constantly been enriching, inclusive, critical and nuanced, fast-forwarding my learning. As a mature student, I would have never thought that I would be capable of doing a PhD, but the course gave me a renewed enthusiasm for academia and the theoretical foundations I needed to get a scholarship – and I’m still pinching myself. I am incredibly grateful to the tutors for giving me such thoughtful guidance and for being able to foster such a special environment of collaboration between students, amongst whom I certainly made friends for life.”

Anna Bertmark 

“The MA Sustainable Design course taught me new ways of thinking and seeing the world in a stimulating and supporting way. The course culture created by the tutors and fellow students contributed to a conducive and enjoyable learning environment. It enables personal design explorations at a very high level, which develops a capability to understand and discuss complex issues and also often leads to further academic opportunities.”

Sarah Macbeth

“I found the MASD course to be a supportive and open space to consolidate and reflect on my ideas, develop new design practices and improve my research skills and critical thinking. I’d highly recommend the course for anyone wanting to be challenged, to experiment in their practice and become confident working with uncertainty. This is a unique course, highly relevant to current complex problems, with passionate tutors and a talented alumni community.”

Student work 

Summer Shows

At the end of every academic year, the School of Architecture and Design comes alive with creativity, celebration, and community spirit at our annual Architecture and Design Summer Show. This vibrant event marks the culmination of months of hard work, innovation, and exploration by our talented students and offers a glimpse into the future of architecture and design.

Click the image below to take a virtual wander and explore our students’ creative work.

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Local area

Maps

Support and wellbeing

Sport at Brighton