Arts and design degrees shaping the modern world

According to designer Thomas Heatherwick, buildings today are too flat, plain, straight, shiny, monotonous, anonymous, and serious. In 2024, we can add one more grouse to the man behind London’s revived Routemaster bus, Google’s Bay View campus, and New York’s award-winning Little Island’s park list: too unsustainable. 

How then does an aspiring artist or designer achieve the opposite? To gain the skill, care, and thought to create objects and buildings of beauty and virtue, you can’t go wrong with an advanced degree in these fields. Whether it’s architecture or art, landscapes or cultural resources, diving deeper into these disciplines will help you create or be part of creations that retain their significance for hundreds of years. Below are the most impactful arts and design degrees to get a headstart on making a difference: 

The LSU College of Art & Design offers innovative, impactful, and affordable advanced design degrees. Source: LSU College of Art & Design

LSU College of Art & Design

LSU College of Art & Design graduates are now editors at award-winning animation studios like Pixar, curators at LSU Rural Life Museum, and leaders in many professional and academic fields related to the cultural economy. You too can follow in their footsteps by joining one of the innovative, impactful, and affordable advanced design degrees offered here, such as the Master of Architecture, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Science in Interior Design, Master of Landscape Architecture, and Doctor of Design (DDes) in Cultural Preservation. 

The DDes focuses on the study, preservation, and enhancement of cultural resources. It is one of the few affordable public university DDes programmes in the US that provides applied research training in fields related to cultural preservation and heritage conservation. As it’s multidisciplinary, DDes students can choose to specialise in areas covering art and design, material culture, or museum and archival. Whichever you choose, you’re set to get advanced training and experimentation in the management, preservation, interpretation, and application of cultural heritage. 

You will have the opportunity to learn from and shadow expert faculty members who have years of experience in the field. They will challenge you to explore your creativity in solving today’s issues by working on real-world projects with clients and conducting research. You can even get involved with community organisations and planning agencies as well.

The best part? LSU’s location. The US state of Louisiana is warm and sunny — descriptions that fit its climate as well as the people here. And you’ll always be surrounded by natural beauty. An hour’s drive away is New Orleans, with more food and nightlife options to enliven your downtime. Visit various eateries, go bar hopping, or participate in the annual Mardi Gras holiday; there is always something to do in beautiful New Orleans. Apply to the LSU College of Art & Design today.

The Master of Fine Arts is the Department of Art, Art History, and Design only master’s degree programme. Source: North Carolina State University

Michigan State University

Michigan State University offers over 250 graduate programmes, but its Department of Art, Art History, and Design only focuses on one. The Master of Fine Arts is the department’s sole master’s degree programme that encourages students to form artistic expressions and innovations that make meaningful impacts on the world. The master’s degree will expand your empathic understanding towards underdeveloped communities, ecologies, marginalised cultures, and the environment by critiquing centuries of colonialism.

As the department is home to more than 50 faculty and staff members, the programme benefits from each of their expertise. With strengths in design practice and theory, abstract, experimental, and figurative painting, print media, installation, sculpture, ceramics and materials studies, photography, art and science, digital fabrication and intermedia, apparel and textile design, art criticism, history, and visual culture studies, performative exhibition practices, social practice and activism, you are sure to gain vast knowledge or specific skills that can help you with your programme and eventually, in the professional field.

Throughout your time here, you’ll be surrounded by 5,200 acres of beautiful green scenery — it’s a blend of tranquillity in its botanical gardens that balances the many exciting events that fill the campus’s social calendar. The university has also prepared a bucket list of 50 things you should do on and off campus so you can get the full Spartan experience during your time here.

Public schools, green spaces, small businesses, and historic sites — these are some of the buildings the College of Design works on. Source: College of Design

North Carolina State University

At the College of Design at North Carolina State University, students use their creativity to develop architectural and design solutions for the public’s convenience and well-being. With guidance from faculty members, you will study public schools, green spaces, small businesses, and historic sites and learn how to improve them using the knowledge and skills gathered. Programmes offered here include the Masters of Architecture, Master of Advanced Architectural Studies, Master of Art + Design, Master of Graphic and Experience Design, Master of Industrial Design, and Master of Landscape Architecture.

The Doctor of Design programme, on the other hand, focuses on research and promotes new knowledge that can be applied to the professional world of design. It aims to pursue design research in support of those professions creating the artifacts, communications, environments, organising structures, and systems of the future. Here, you will use design-based practices, cases, and methods to conduct original investigations that can contribute to society’s needs. 

From August 2024, the DDes will be part of a new doctoral programme unit within the college. It’s led by Newton D’Souza, who brings 20 years of experience as a professional architect, interior designer and educator. He’s also the author of “The Multi-Skilled Designer: A Cognitive Foundation for Inclusive Architectural Thinking,” which presents different approaches to contemporary architectural design and interprets them through the theory of multiple intelligences, using cognitive psychology to analyse the thought processes of architectural designers.

*Some of the institutions features in this article are commercial partners of Study International