Bachelor of Arts - Design

THREE-YEAR BA PROGRAM IN DESIGN

INTRODUCTION

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Design is one of the most frequently recurring ingredients in the transformations that are taking place in the contemporary world. These are changes that first of all affect the designer’s role and works: a designer is no longer asked to find answers to given problems (production, cultural and social), but to be able to formulate new questions. Innovative hypothesis and question marks on the future world, but above all new visions of the world in which we are currently living, here and now. These are concepts and ideas intertwined with and criss-crossing the design of products, services and communication in its multiple forms: starting from this point of view, designers can be seen as a curious “narrator” telling about other possible worlds. These narrations will be developed using the tools that are typically adopted by designers: real-scale prototypization of objects and environments, material models, technical drawings, photography and video-clips. Starting from this vision, the course can be intended as a three-year journey through the design project culture in which students will at the same time acquire a number of conceptual, methodological and technical tools connected with the various stages of the journey itself.

DIDACTIC METHODOLOGY
This course has a strong focus on the idea of “learning by doing”: three years structured around various design challenges, practical and real, through which students will learn to develop a working method centred on the ability to work in group and to mature dialogue and relation skills. The “project” is therefore intended first of all as a network of cultural, technological and production links to be developed and shared with the professors and – just as important – with classmates.
This methodological matrix will be applied to various project types and environments, also thanks to numerous intensive workshops that will enable students to choose between two directions: one more oriented towards interior and outfitting design and another one towards product design.

PROFESSIONAL PROFILES
The Course aims at training people capable of facing with awareness the complexity of the contemporary world and the new needs of the production world. Students will be provided with all those technical skills that will enable them to start working in a company or in a professional studio and at the same time with the cultural and methodological bases to continue their studies and become professionally fully autonomous.

PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES
Throughout the academic year 2007/08 NABA Design students participated in NABA international workshops and in the exhibition Nabasutra (Milan International Furniture Fair), in the landscape architecture workshops “Picnic at the temple” (Sicily). In addition to this, other groups have collaborated to the San Salvario project and to the workshop with Enzo Mari for Torino Geo-design. The most interesting theses have been exhibited at the Milan Triennale Design Museum during the “Bookshow” event.

To have a look at the developed projects and activities, please visit:
www.naba-design.net
www.youtube.com/user/NABAdesign

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Stefano Mirti
He graduated in Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino where he also obtained the Ph.D. doctorate in Architecture Technology, as well as the post- Ph.D. doctorate at the University of Tokyo (Tadao Ando lab). He was Professor at the Tama Fine Art University of Tokyo (2000/1), and at the Interaction Design Institute of Ivrea (2001/5). He was one of the founders of Cliostraat, he was
responsible of e1 (Exhibition Unit) of IDII (Interaction Design Institute Ivrea) (2004/5), and he is responsible of Design at the Id-lab (Interaction Design Lab). He worked and designed in Japan, South East Asia and in many European cities. He writes and collaborates with Italian and international
magazines like Domus. For Postmedia Books he wrote the following books: “Toyo Ito: istruzioni per l’uso” (2004), “Yung Ho Chang: luce chiara, camera oscura” (2005), “Interaction Design Primer” (2006).

CURRICULUM

DESIGN SUBJECTS – I year

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE I
The 1st-year basic laboratory aims at supplying students with the cultural and technical tools needed to understand the inhabited space, to identify its conceptual and formal structures, its ways and aims of construction and its communication levels through the analysis of symbolic cases in the production of interiors and temporary exhibitions.

DRAWING FOR DESIGN
Drawing: The teaching objective of this course consists in providing all basic tools needed for the free-hand visualisation or for the highlighting of a project in its various development steps: from ideation to the first sketches up to the final graphic representation. Just because we are living in a world dominated by digital software, being capable of drawing by pencil (or by pen) is fundamental. The course is annual and during the first semester the class is divided into groups according to the students’ starting skills.

Tools: During four intensive workshops the skills acquired during the main course can be directly applied: drawing to tell stories and to talk about feelings (visual writing), product design (drawing wherever I am), drawing and its relationship with photography (building an analogical camera and a darkroom), drawing to represent reality (there is no project without observation).

HISTORY OF DESIGN I
It introduces to the world of Design: language, culture and critical theory according to a historical
approach that goes through different deepening areas. Students will be able to read the “Design System”: object and context, design methodologies and applied technologies, models, prototypes and materials. It explores the relationships between Design and other disciplines (Art, Crafts, Architecture, Fashion and Media) and between Design and different contexts (nature, economy, industry).

HISTORY OF MODERN ART
The course traces the birth, the institutionalisation and the crisis of the Western representation model that has characterised Art in the modern age. The optical devices, the geometrical outlines, the idea of the square, the relationship between the observer and the image producer, the role of the client and the exhibition place will be the themes dealt with along this historical journey from Giotto to Velázquez up to Courbet, not according to a temporal linear development but in relation to the level of formalization reached by each of the issues treated. The course proposes a sort of deconstruction “Representation” as a status of the Western modern image.

TECHNOLOGY OF MATERIALS I
Product Technology: The course means to introduce students to the knowledge of materials’ qualities, requirements and performances in order to master basic and useful information. This also implies the sensorial exploration of materials and the knowledge of working techniques and transformation tools.
Students learn how to work with a specific material: this skill will enable them to make similar experiences with other materials. A number of visits to particularly significant companies in the production field (glass, plastic, wood) represent an integral part of the course. The relationship that has been set up with the Consortium of the Furniture District in Lissone make it possible to carry out a number of extra-curricular activities that prove to be particularly interesting.

Materials and New Technologies: A six-month course on new technologies crossing the world of traditional materials integrates the practical knowledge on a specific material. The course is focused issues such as designing interactive installations, using specific technologies applied to the world of exhibition design (or interior design), mechanics and robotics.

PRODUCT DESIGN I
Project Methodology: The course provides the tools needed to face the complexity of Product Design in order to develop a synthesis ability and to create a coherent proposal. Basic problems are analysed through practical exercises and case studies: the passage from sketch to model, the relationship between men and objects as well as the technical problems in the production of the project.

Intensive Workshops: First-year students will also take part in a number of project workshops in which the representation tools (digital or analogical) represent the most important communication medium between a designer and the rest of the world.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS
CAD I: It is important to learn the bases of traditional drawing and it is as important to learn the fundamentals of digital drawing right from the beginning: how to quote a drawing, the basic concepts of technical representation, their translation into digital files. An exhibition of objects produced through a 3D printer on the basis of the digital files realised by the students during the course is organised at the end of the year.

Digital Drawing: The course, structured into two semesters – one devoted to Photoshop and one to Illustrator, aims at providing students with the basic elements for the visualisation and presentation of their projects, in order to progressively create a digital portfolio of their works starting from the first year. The output of these two modules will be a number of photo-books the content of which (pictures and page lay-out) is generated through the above-mentioned software.

DESIGN SUBJECTS – II year

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE II
Methodology: this course will enable students to explore the issues of exhibiting and displaying, of putting on stage as a form of communication of present values and brand strategies. After acquiring the basic tools during the first year, students start to work on the “space” issue, intended as a sophisticated and complex language.

Intensive Workshop: an intensive workshop runs in parallel to the main course. In this workshop the project themes referred to interior design are extended to buildings, public space as well as the general urban structure as a whole.

HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY ART I
The course deals with an in-depth analysis of the relationship between Art and environmental space within all the artistic movements of the twentieth century starting from one of the protagonists of such research like Gianni Colombo (Milan, 1937- 1993). Colombo’s overcoming of the bi- or threedimensional work and the direct involvement of theexhibition space allow to focus on the temporalization of space as well as on the programming and participation of the work of art. Sectors such as Cinema, Theatre, Design, Video and Architecture will be read in an integrated and historicized framework.

TECHNOLOGY OF MATERIALS II
Through theoretical and practical lessons on materials and tools technologies students are offered the opportunity to discover the possibilities and the ways of transforming materials (natural and synthetic) in various design applications. Students will acquire a background of knowledge in this field in order to be able to respond to the speed and efficiency requirements when providing technical solutions. Creativity is fostered – without limiting it to the technological aspect – as a notion and as an aim. If in the first year students are exposed to the wonders of manual drawing, in the second year they will explore the world of physical prototyping in a 1/1 scale. The principle is the same: finding one’s own way in the various forms of manual work is one of the basic ingredients in a contemporary designer’s training.

PRODUCT DESIGN II
Methodology: this course will provide students with the necessary tools for a rational control of the project in the transition from the theoretical to the practical stage. The simulation of design and production paths enables students to learn the variables that play a role in the designing phase such as market needs, technological data and image issues.

Design Applications: a one-semester “application” course where the issues connected with the world of product design are faced by using various tools and applications.

DIGITAL MODELLING TECHNIQUES
CAD II: in the first year students have dealt with Autocad, Photoshop and Illustrator. In the second year they will mainly learn how to use Modo. Students who prefer more intuitive and easier digital modelling programs can use (as an alternative to the Modo course) a Sketch up course.

Processing: an intensive Processing workshop is part of the program: this is a programming language that enables students to learn the programming bases through software that has been exclusively developed for designers. In this way students will acquire the concept fundamentals necessary to follow the intensive course in Electronics during the third year.

DESIGN SYSTEM
The theoretical path followed in the course goes through the entire history of design, focusing on objects as well as on designers, on the main cultural trends and in particular on some critical-methodological categories that are typical of design.
The course is structure around some theme cores: concept and operational categories of design (notion of time and standard, idea of progress, the narrative function of objects, the domestic environment), national scenarios, cultural movements, the study of some designers and of some emblematic projects.

LIGHT DESIGN
Students will be offered the possibility to choose between two light design courses (one referred to the product world and the other to space and interior design). Objective of this course is to get to the awareness that light is, first of all, a language.

ACCESSORY DESIGN
As an alternative to the previous course (light design), students can choose this course that is placed in-between design and fashion. Through the fast-prototypization techniques, students develop an analysis and an understanding of the world of accessories and design a collection of objects that belong to the desire sphere.

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The course provides the study elements concerning the new “ways of living”, i.e. how the recent digital revolution has changed our ways of living, our homes and cities. Students will approach new
forms of living: semi-public and semi-private spaces, relationship-spaces and self-spaces, the new
objects of sur-modernity, Marc Augé’s anonymous non-places which, no matter where they are built, have no identity and can be recognised only through linguistic messages and signs.

MARKETING
Students will acquire the basic elements of marketing, the present consumption trends and the current sociological changes. They will learn how to make a marketing plan by analysing all steps involved in the launching plan of a new product. The course develops also themes related to Sociology (trends, consumption approaches, lifestyles), Economics (supply and offer, budget, costs management, pricing) and Communication (brand, Design, Advertising). The course aims at the acquisition of a method (as a system to approach marketing problems, from the analysis to the development of the project), of a language and of the comprehension of a company’s internal and external context.

DESIGN SUBJECTS – III year

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE III
In the third year students can choose either the interior architecture or the product design course. The whole third course year will be centred on the chosen course and on the project culture laboratory (thesis). The two didactical paths are interconnected. The outcome of the interior architecture course will be the prototypization of a real physical space, according to the guidelines provided by the professor at the beginning of the course.

PRODUCT DESIGN III
The training path developed in the first two years is completed during this one-year course that represents a real project synthesis of the curricular path on the whole.
The skills acquired in the previous two years are synthesized in the project that is developed during this course and that becomes the core of the thesis (see: PROJECT CULTURE). The outcome of this course, like interior architecture, will be the physical prototypization of the object (or set of objects) that represents the examination theme.

PROJECT CULTURE
The third course year is centred on the project culture lab in which the bases for the theses will be laid. Students will choose whether to follow the lab focusing on “product design” or the one focused on “space” (interior or exhibition design). A number of interdisciplinary lab experiences will enable students to approach the theme of design in connection with the world of sounds.

DIGITAL MODELLING TECHNIQUES II
During the third year students (as a part of the thesis lab) can choose between a 3D Modelling course based on Modo / Rhino or a course on video-clips applied to a design project (this tool is increasingly more used in the professional practice).

URBAN DESIGN
The course is a reading, interpretation and planning experience related to the complexity of the urban reality, in particular with the public space meant as a place of relations and sociality. The course means to show a working method and in particular an approach to the project starting from the observation of the urban “context”, because confronting oneself with its complexity is a fundamental attitude for the design activity in all its applications.

DESIGN MANAGEMENT
It proposes an approach to develop environmentally sustainable products and services in order to provide students with the sensitivity, the tools and methods capable of integrating environmental requirements in the design of products and services.

CONTEMPORARY ART PHENOMENA
The course is focused on the analysis of the influence of Twentieth Century Art on contemporary project culture. Critical and interpretation tools are developed through the study of some fundamental experiences in the world of visual arts and of the historical avant-garde movements up to present times.

INTERACTION DESIGN
New Technologies: the in-depth study of the materials and technologies used by designers continues also in the third year. The main subject theme of the third course year is “interaction”. Interaction between users and design systems, using diversified technologies.

Interfaces: in a world where the new technologies are more and more pervasive, knowing the fundamentals of the programming world proves to be essential for students in order to be able to talk to the technology experts that they will meet in their professional lives.
These workshops give students the opportunity to observe closely how electronics interacts with design.

HISTORY OF CINEMA AND VIDEO
The course has the following objectives: 1) an approach to the themes of audiovisual products in general and of cinema in particular 2) the analysis of the spectator-film relationship in order to make students’ vision of films more critical and effective 3) the knowledge of the cinematographic language and of the technologies underneath cinema 4) the knowledge of the production steps of a movie 5) the analysis of the reading modalities of a script 6) the knowledge of the main movements of the History of Cinema and of the most significant authors.

PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography: The main character of photography is its specific ability to “capture” all together shapes and movements, spaces and events. Starting from these premises, the course includes teaching, analysis and selection of specific elements of photography techniques; knowledge and in-depth study of photography works as historical models and as part of contemporary imagination; constructing and analysing the photography tools; teaching and thinking about photography as a non-ambiguous language.
Photography Techniques: This course aims at providing students with all the necessary skills to use analogical and digital photographic equipment. Both the shooting and the post-production processes will be analysed. Students will start with a study of light in order to subsequently learn how to use an optical bench, digital equipment and finally software devoted to photographic elaboration. Besides fostering the development of specific technical skills, students are encouraged to reflect on the photographic medium, to learn “to see” and “read” the photographic image as it is.

AESTHETICS
The course highlights the problems and difficulties concerning the situation of Art and of contemporary Culture. It introduces to the basic notions of the philosophical aesthetics and goes through the present trends in terms of artistic research. The course is divided into two semesters. In the first semester students will acquire an aesthetic knowledge, from traditional crucial points up to contemporary times, while the second semester is dedicated to the state of research in a period characterised by a cognitive mortification.

Design Bachelors of Arts in Milan, Italy