Intro

Sustainability is a fundamental part of the design industry. Our Sustainable Design MA is at the forefront of this discipline, specialising in research-led learning, criticality and innovation in design practice, theory and culture.

As a student on our established postgraduate degree you will learn to utilise design research in order to examine sustainable development challenges and pursue original ideas for more equitable and just futures. You will have opportunities to expand critical conversations about how design informs and interrelates with the complex and challenging issues of sustainability and design culture.

‘Sustainable Design’, or ‘Design for Sustainability’ (DfS), has evolved considerably over the last 40 years. You will learn with researchers, academics and industry experts who critically confront sustainability issues in, through and for design. Thematics within the course evolve continually in line with the discipline and will include, for example, gender equality and space, design justice, pluriversality, regenerative design, decolonising design, and confronting legacies of oppression in design theory, practice, and education.

Learning alongside students with different professional backgrounds and experience, our Sustainable Design MA is designed to continue to drive this discipline forward, by equipping you with the skills to implement change and adapt to the shapeshifting nature of sustainable development.

Find out about postgraduate events

Key facts

Location Brighton: Moulsecoomb

Full-time 1 year
Part-time 2 years

Apply now for your place

Please review the entry requirements carefully and if you have any questions do get in touch with us.

Entry criteria

Entry requirements

Degree and experience
Candidates will normally have a previous degree, although this does not have to be in a design subject, or equivalent.

English language requirements
IELTS 6.5 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in each element. Find out more about the other English qualifications that we accept.

Other
There is no formal deadline for receipt of applications, and applications may be made at any time. At the point of admission, students are expected to have clear reasoning behind their choice to undertake this programme, nominal understanding of the context of sustainable design underpinned by a desire and determination to know more. Direct access to semester 3 of the programme will be considered only where applicants have accrued appropriate number of credits at either masters-level or postgraduate study in a relevant subject.

Applicants must demonstrate through their personal statement within the application form and, where appropriate, at interview a clear motivation to engage with issues of sustainability and design through demonstrating:

an ability to articulate individual perceptions and understandings of sustainable design
an ability to positively engage in critical discussion regarding the broader implications in relation to sustainability
to present a body of work that demonstrates experience and competency
an ambition to critically appraise and develop their practice within the context of sustainability.

International requirements and visas

International requirements by country
Country name
Albania
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Bermuda
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma (Myanmar)
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guyana
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kosovo
Kuwait
Latvia
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malaysia
Malawi
Malta
Mexico
Moldova
Montenegro
Morocco
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian National Authority
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russian Federation
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Syria
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States
Uzbekistan
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

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

View our English language courses

For pre-sessional English preparation courses.

Visit our International College

For degree preparation courses.

Visas and immigration advice

Applying for a student visa

Check out our step-by-step guidance.

Course content

Why study with us?

As a student of this course, you will benefit from our innovative transdisciplinary approach to sustainable design learning that incorporates ideas from ecology, psychology, and business with a balance of theory and practice. World leading specialist knowledge in multiple disciplines are available to you to tap into due to the range of scholars and departments at the University of Brighton.
You will be joining a vibrant community, and will study in a collaborative environment of dedicated workshops and studios.
Brighton is one of Europe's most progressive and creative cities, providing the ideal backdrop and inspiration for the subject.
Our guest lecturer programme features inspiring staff from related industries, policy, research, and activism. Guest lecturers provide different perspectives on issues and understanding of sustainability and design.
You will meet a diverse and inspiring group of fellow students – people join us with backgrounds in graphic design, illustration, architecture, fashion, education, politics, product design and more.
As a Sustainable Design MA student, you become part of a community of practitioners and researchers. This is an active group made of current students, staff and alumni who share ideas and interests to support and empower one another.

Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Extensive workshops provide a key part of the student experience.

Areas of study

Core modules

Situate
This module will introduce established and emerging principles, theories, and thematics in design. The module will help you situate yourself, your interests and practices within contemporary design discourses and global contexts and help identify and nurture personal motivations within your area of specialisation. Themes covered may include sustainability, powers and politics, equalities, systemic complexity, and creating change through design.

Design Lab
In this module, you will develop your own practice in sustainable design through independently defined studio practice. You'll have the space to explore and develop your ideas enabling you to progress to a position of authority in your chosen area of specialisation. This will support you to confidently and critically develop individually defined research practices. The module provides a reflective and productive environment for you to develop self-directed projects that engage critically with current discourses in sustainability and design.

Radical Modes of Design Culture and Practice
This module introduces and critically examines 'modes' of design. Design is a diverse, contested and continually changing discipline. You will learn about design through the intersecting cultures of thinking, doing, and applying design practices.

You will explore how design can re-imagine current practices to establish new codes and ways of working that engage the 'radical' (from the Latin radix, or root) changes needed to address sustainability challenges.

Sustainable Design: Masterwork
The Masterwork is a self-directed design research project applying experiences, methods, skills and mastery accrued throughout the programme. Research-led design will enable you to pioneer new directions for sustainable design, challenge existing expertise and develop new insights into design research, and establishing new ways of working in response to emergent issues in sustainability and design.

Research Practices
Research Practices introduces you to the challenges involved in designing, implementing and disseminating a research project. You will develop a written proposal that can inform the development of your masterwork project, encouraging you to consider how your investigations contribute to the academic knowledge in your field.

Options*

Distributed Design and Production
Critical Readings
Sustainable Design: Future(s)

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

Our studio

Students work in our masters centre which provides studio, seminar and tutorial space at Mithras House on the Moulsecoomb campus.

Students on our Sustainable Design MA will have dedicated studio space with access to workshop and digital model-making facilities. More specialised materials and making requirements can be supported on an individual basis with colleagues in engineering, crafts and arts.

Staff profile

Dr Tom Ainsworth, 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.

He 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.

Sally Sutherland, lecturer

Sally Sutherland has been teaching on the Sustainable Design MA since 2018. She is also completing her AHRC funded practice-based design Ph.D. at the University of Brighton.

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:

Tom and Sally standing next to each other at exhibition of student work

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

The MA gives you plenty of opportunities to make an active contribution to sustainable design. Many of our students have begun projects at university that they have carried over into their working life or to PhD study.

Free Diver Bea Maggipinto’s research was about understanding embodied relationships with the seas. Her exploratory work opened up new narratives and ways of knowing in communities and the ocean's well-being. Building on her master’s work, Bea is now a fully funded doctoral PhD candidate at the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Dual Program.
Kirsten Chen’s research was exploring and communicating challenges of data literacy, presenting the consequence of often unintentional data bias. From this project, Kirsten developed a Design lab spanning the UK and Taiwan which primarily works as a sustainability literacy education platform.

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Recent graduate work featured here, includes:

Sarah Macbeth explored how design practices can help understand, support, and amplify commoning practices. As part of a wider investigation into practices of commoning, Sarah worked with her local community (in Hastings, East Sussex, UK) and Transition Town group to design a festival of sustainable ideas called Sustainability on Sea.
Anna Bertmark’s creative exploratory work used design artefacts to help imagine new ways of dwelling well together within planetary boundaries.
Rachel Wilson’s work considered the tensions between notions of slowness and the urgency of planetary crises for the design of socio-ecologically sustainable futures. Rachel presented listening as a core method to interrupt dominant considerations of time and ways of being.

Ben Peppiatt uses his practice to facilitate discourse-for-design to help shape a more responsible and resilient future. He seeks to make work that helps others see the world through a more pluralistic lens.
Chantal Spencer’s work is aimed at designers and researchers engaging in participatory design research asking: How can we balance paternalistic design practices that speak for others with working practices that reflect the true nature of the “nothing about us without us” ideology of inclusion?
Katie Cunningham created a ‘sympoietic’ Thinking Tool, influenced by Indigenous knowledges, Buddhist philosophy, Ecofeminism and Western Science. The tool is intended to encourage different ways of thinking and can be best used as part of a conversation rather than as a tool to provide a solution to a problem.

More about this subject at Brighton

Come to an open day!

Join us for an undergraduate open day this autumn.

Design graduates team up to turn waste ‘gig economy’ uniforms into sustainable bags

A Product Design graduate has earned a collaboration with alumni Tom Meades’ sustainable design studio, gomi, to make bags from waste courier uniforms.

Product design students showcase their projects in exclusive Dezeen article

The architecture and design online magazine Dezeen, which has over three million monthly readers, recently featured a selection of product design students from the University, showcasing the impressive work they completed as part of their final-year projects.

Graduates 2024: Hanna Harings-Mahendra: Product Design BSc(Hons)

Organising the course so that each student can be their individual selves makes the course well worth it.

Careers

We support students at all stages of their lives and careers and believe strongly that learning is a lifelong activity. This commitment means that we host students from a broad range of educational, employment, practice, and life experiences.

Our applicants range from experienced practitioners seeking expertise in sustainability; students progressing directly from undergraduate study; and people seeking a career change or who want to find more purpose and meaning in their employment.

Our graduates have progressed careers in areas such as highly skilled employment, research, or have launch business start-ups.

Some have gone into employment in sustainability focussed roles as either designers, analysts, strategists, or academics for organisations, including: Government/Policy roles in Policy Lab, Nesta; Design agencies, including Brand Pie and Sonder Collective; or charitable organisations, such as Fairtrade and Change Grow Live.

Since the course launched in 2009, more than 15 of our students have continued their studies at PhD level. Most of these receive fully funded studentships – either via the University of Brighton or hosted by other leading institutions internationally.

Our graduates have also gone on to create their own businesses. Notable start-ups include BlockBuilders – a UK-based design agency specialising in digitally-based youth engagement; ONCA – a social enterprise workshop and agency based in Costa Rica; Yoshi Design Lab – a multidisciplinary design agency based in Taiwan; Old Tree Brewery and Eve Apple Press – two sustainability focussed drinks companies based in Sussex.

Fees and costs

Course fees

UK (full-time) 8,400 GBP

International (full-time) 15,900 GBP

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.

Fee information for this course for 2025 entry will be updated here no later than December 2024.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2024–25.

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).

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that are included and any extras that you may be expected to pay while studying a course in the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering in the 2022–23 academic year are listed here.

Travel and accommodation costs are included for all mandatory taught residential field trips, but you’ll need to provide your own food and drink.
There will be opportunities to attend additional study trips or optional taught residential field trips throughout the school, but these are not required to pass your course. Normally, a contribution will be required towards expenses such as travel, entrance fees and accommodation. This will vary depending on where and how long the trip is, but you should budget around £1,500.
Where optional international field trips are offered, these are not required to pass your course. You should expect to budget £300–£500 for these, to cover flight, accommodation, food and entrance to museums. The total amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken.
If you choose to take an optional paid placement, you’ll be expected to cover your own travel, accommodation, food and drink.
Some students require specialist outdoor equipment and/or personal protective equipment (PPE) and should budget up to £150.
You will have access to computers and necessary software; however, many students choose to buy their own hardware, software and accessories. The amount spent will depend on your individual choices, but this expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses. Find out what free software is available from the University of Brighton.
Course books are available from the university, but you may wish to budget from £15 to £100 per year to buy your own copies and subscribe to design magazines.
In most cases coursework submissions are electronic but students may wish to print notes which would involve an extra cost.
Costs of up to £50 are included in the fees for students on engineering courses to pay for materials for their final year projects. On rare occasions where material costs exceed £50, they will need to be paid for by the student.

Architecture, interior architecture, design and product design additional costs

Students should budget around £25 for printing and binding dissertations in their final year.
In your first year of studies, you will need to buy a drawing and modelling toolkit. Each course will suggest a list of items of which some will be essential, and others optional. You should budget around £100–£250 for these.
For most courses you will need to budget between £100 to £300 per year for printing and portfolio costs. Costs will vary depending on type of printer and type and size of paper used. Some students tend to work digitally, spending more on printing and some by hand, spending more on materials so these costs vary widely between students.
For most courses you will need to budget between £10 and £100 for material costs per design project. Costs will vary depending on how and what you use to make models. You are encouraged to recycle used materials where possible.
You will need to budget between £5–£50 to exhibit work for the end-of-year show. Fundraising by the student society, BIAAS, normally helps towards this cost.

You can chat with our enquiries team if you have a question or need more information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Location and student life

Campus where this course is taught

Moulsecoomb campus

Two miles north of Brighton seafront, Moulsecoomb is our largest campus and student village. Moulsecoomb has been transformed by a recent development of our estate. On campus you'll find new Students' Union, events venue, and sports and fitness facilities, alongside the library and student centre.

Over 900 students live here in our halls, Moulsecoomb Place and the new Mithras halls – Brunswick, Goldstone, Hanover, Preston and Regency.

Moulsecoomb has easy access to buses and trains and to all the exciting things happening in our home city.

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Accommodation

We guarantee an offer of a place in halls of residence to all eligible students. So if you applied for halls by the deadline you are guaranteed a room in our halls of residence.

Brighton: Moulsecoomb

Halls of residence
We have self-catered halls on all our campuses, within minutes of your classes, and other options that are very nearby.

You can apply for any of our halls, but the options closest to your study location are:

Mithras Halls are stylish new high-rises in the heart of the student village at our revitalised Moulsecoomb campus with ensuite rooms for more than 800 students.
Varley Park is a popular dedicated halls site, offering a mix of rooms and bathroom options at different prices. It is around two miles from Moulsecoomb campus and four miles from the city centre, and is easy to get to by bus.

Want to live independently?
We can help – find out more about private renting.

Modern accommodation at Moulsecoomb

Relaxing in halls near the campus

Student Union social space at Moulsecoomb

Local area

About Brighton

The city of Brighton & Hove is a forward-thinking place which leads the way in the arts, technology, sustainability and creativity. You'll find living here plays a key role in your learning experience.

Brighton is a leading centre for creative media technology, recently named the startup capital of the UK.

The city is home to a national 5G testbed and over 1,000 tech businesses. The digital sector is worth over £1bn a year to the local economy - as much as tourism.

All of our full-time undergraduate courses involve work-based learning - this could be through placements, live briefs and guest lectures. Many of these opportunities are provided by local businesses and organisations.

It's only 50 minutes by train from Brighton to central London and there are daily direct trains to Bristol, Bedford, Cambridge, Gatwick Airport, Portsmouth and Southampton.

Maps

Moulsecoomb campus map

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Support and wellbeing

Your course team

Your personal academic tutor, course leader and other tutors are all there to help you with your personal and academic progress. You'll also have a student support and guidance tutor (SSGT) who can help with everything from homesickness, managing stress or accommodation issues.

Your academic skills

Our Brighton Student Skills Hub gives you extra support and resources to develop the skills you'll need for university study, whatever your level of experience so far.

Your mental health and wellbeing

As well as being supported to succeed, we want you to feel good too. You'll be part of a community that builds you up, with lots of ways to connect with one another, as well having access to dedicated experts if you need them. Find out more about how we support your wellbeing.

Sport at Brighton

Sport Brighton

Sport Brighton brings together our sport and recreation services. As a Brighton student you'll have use of sport and fitness facilities across all our campuses and there are opportunities to play for fun, fitness or take part in serious competition.

Find out more about Sport Brighton.

Sports scholarships

Our sports scholarship scheme is designed to help students develop their full sporting potential to train and compete at the highest level. We offer scholarships for elite athletes, elite disabled athletes and talented sports performers.

Find out more about sport scholarships.

Stay in touch