autonomous design

Our design focus is not on efficiency or productivity, but we develop processes, relationalities and sensitivities that are contextualised and situated. Students develop their artistic talents in relation to societal challenges. They open questions about ecology, social justice, the way we want to treat the earth, and work on futures we need.

Topics and attitudes that meet in our collective studio: activism and the politics of everyday life, ‘more than human’ society, organisation as artistic form, rebellious objects and subversive systems. Recent practices include: mobile mushroom farm for solidarity cooking practices, making furniture from bioplastic and food waste, validating negativity as a creative force, woodworm design, becoming an expert in falling over, post-punk techno-poetry, creative prosthetics design, participatory design work with undocumented people, gender fluid nail studio.

You will work independently on a project during the master year, guided by mentors, and in constant dialogue with fellow students. You follow a collective master class that addresses fundamental aspects of artistic practice and is supervised annually by a changing external designer or artist. Graduating autonomous designers find connections to a highly diverse professional field of critical collectives, ecological design platforms, transdisciplinary art houses and groundbreaking design firms.

In 2025-2026, we offer a Dutch- and an English-language master's year. We also offer an entry-level path with a focus on experimentation, participation, artistic research and methodologies of autonomous design.