The MA Material Futures course at Central Saint Martins enables students to develop a multidisciplinary approach to design, with a focus on blurring boundaries between design, technology and science. 

MA Material Futures encourages a multidisciplinary approach to design. Through transdisciplinary practice and collaboration you will explore how we will live in the future.

By working with experts, taking risks and blurring the boundaries between design, science and technology, you will look beyond existing disciplines, anticipating the future needs, desires and challenges that we face in the 21st century.

We believe that only by observing and analysing how we live today we can begin to explore how we might occupy tomorrow. Considering the current and future context of design decisions is key to our ethos.

We will encourage you to combine social, scientific, political, environmental, ecological and economic inquiry. These insights will help inform future design scenarios, material propositions and research-led speculations.

Taking materiality as the starting point of the design process – literally the things we can touch, feel, interact with and observe – we integrate high and low technological materials and processes. Our students explore and come from a diverse range of disciplines.

These include the worlds of fashion and architecture, as well as industrial, communication, textile, critical, digital and speculative design.

School: Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UAL)
Course: MA Material Futures
Type: Postgraduate
Location: London, United Kingdom
Course dates: starts September 2026, with a duration of two years (60 weeks) extended full-time
Application deadline: 18 March 2026

Applications to this course have now closed.

What will I learn during this course?

– Multi-disciplinary approach to design
– A range of methodologies, from low-tech analogue craft processes, to high-tech smart and interactive technologies

What are the requirements?

– An honours degree or an equivalent EU/international qualification
– English language requirements: IELTS level 6.5 or above, with at least 5.5 in reading, writing, listening and speaking

What facilities and resources are available?

– Term-time access to a range of open technical facilities, including the Loan Store, Digital Fabrication Bureau, Digital Labs, Digital Print, Paint/Surface, Photography Studios and 3D Capture Lab and Casting
– Term-time access to specialist facilities including Digital Make, 3D Make (Model Making), Physical Computing Lab, Mixed Reality Lab, Grow Lab, Surface Design Lab, Print and Dye

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