Product and Furniture Design

BA Product and Furniture Design at Chelsea College of Arts offers you the chance to explore our social, physical and emotional connection to objects. The course puts making at the centre of design production, ensuring you develop your practical skills. You’ll combine these skills with a critical and investigative approach to objects.

What to expect
• A diverse approach: Develop a flexible and open-minded approach to materials and practice.
• Discipline pathways: You’ll have the opportunity to develop an understanding and alignment with a specific approach to design e.g. social design, designer maker and design for production.
• User-centred design ethnography: Study people’s interaction with objects and gain insights by exploring the social sciences.
• Co-design: Learn to understand design needs by working closely with users to develop responses to community, diversity and access issues.
• Opportunities: Take part in live projects including with museums and heritage sites, community groups, manufacturers and design sector partners.
• Experimentation: Use new and existing technologies and materials to develop new forms of approach to practice.
• Sustainability: The consideration of innovative sustainable practices such as repair, re-use and biodesign.
• New and emerging technologies: Develop an understanding of emergent technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), generative design, collaborative platforms, 3D print and immaterial objects.
• New and emerging practices: Gain an understanding of emergent approaches to design theory – speculative, emotional, ecological and anthropological design.
• Research and analysis: Develop critical reflection, risk- taking and communication skills.
• Collaboration: Gain experience and knowledge of collaborative co-creative methods.
• Skills: By the end of the course, you’ll have a range of creative, technical and professional skills relevant to employment in product design, furniture and related areas.
• Access to Chelsea's shared workshops.

Industry experience and opportunities
During the course you’ll have the optional opportunity through the Diploma in Professional Studies to undertake work placements. You’ll be able to take part in the college’s international exchange scheme to study abroad for a term in the second year of your degree.

About Chelsea College of Arts
Chelsea College of Arts has a reputation for producing some of today’s leading artists and designers. Our students are encouraged to radically engage with contemporary fine art and design practice. The College offers courses in curating and collections, fine art, graphic design, textile design, product and furniture design and interior design

At Chelsea College of Arts, we look at art and design in a social, cultural and political context. We are particularly interested in the effects of globalisation. This could either be on creative practice itself or a response to it. As an international hub of creative practices, we have a range of partnerships, projects and exchanges that broaden student and staff perspectives and knowledge.

Located in central London, the College's Grade ll listed Pimlico site overlooks Tate Britain and the River Thames. It has excellent workshops, extensive library facilities, a canteen and an onsite gallery, Chelsea Space. The College is home to UAL’s Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) research centre, the Decolonising Arts Institute and Iniva.

The College’s alumni include Mariko Mori, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Haroon Mirza, Steve McQueen, Rana Begum, Chris Ofili, Margaret Calvert, Mark Wallinger, Thomas J Price, James Richards and Helen Chadwick.