Master in Design for Emergent Futures at IAAC

The Master in Design for Emergent Futures course at IAAC encourages students to respond to current challenges through a range of design disciplines.

School: IAAC and Elisava
Course: Master in Design for Emergent Futures
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Course dates: October 2025 to June 2026, extendable to a second year upon enrolment
Application deadline: 9 August 2025

The Master in Design for Emergent Futures is an innovative programme for designers, technologists, artists and researchers who want to respond to today’s challenges through critical thinking, hands-on experimentation and real-world engagement. Co-led by IAAC and Elisava, it is structured across four stages: exploration, instrumentation, reflection and application.

Students work with digital fabrication, AI, synthetic biology and speculative methods to develop design interventions connected to pressing issues – climate, inequality, digital culture and more. Projects grow through direct interaction with local communities and urban infrastructures, supported by Fab Lab Barcelona and the Fab City network.

The Master in Design for Emergent Futures is aimed at individuals who want to rethink the role of design and apply it across systems, disciplines and scales. It provides a platform to test ideas in the public realm and to articulate new models for learning, living and building futures.

Set in Barcelona, the World Capital of Architecture 2026, the programme also offers scholarships covering 30 per cent to 50 per cent of tuition fees to support future students. This is a programme for those who are ready to engage with uncertainty and move from concept to action – through research, dialogue and making.

Applications to this course have now closed.

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