Product and Furniture Design with Foundation
Product and furniture design is the discipline concerned with shaping the physical objects that people use, inhabit, and live alongside. It asks how everyday things, from chairs and tables to electronic devices and domestic goods, can be made better: more functional, more beautiful, more honest in their use of materials, and more mindful of the people who will use them and the environments they will occupy. The field sits at the intersection of engineering thinking and creative practice, and the best designers move fluently between making, drawing, researching, and testing their ideas in the real world.
The four-year full-time Product and Furniture Design with Foundation programme at the University of Plymouth is designed for students who want to enter this field but whose current qualifications or experience take a non-standard form. The foundation year allows you to develop the practical, technical, academic, and creative skills needed in preparation for the first year of the undergraduate programme, ensuring that when you join the BA you are equipped to succeed. The main programme then develops your design thinking and making skills across the disciplines of furniture and product design, using workshop facilities, digital tools including CAD, and critical and contextual study.
A sandwich year, year abroad, and work placement options give you professional and international experience at different stages of your studies, which are particularly valuable in a creative field where the nature of professional practice and industry expectations are best understood through direct engagement.
Graduates from product and furniture design programmes work as designers, design researchers, and creative practitioners in studios, manufacturing companies, and in-house design teams across consumer goods, contract furniture, interiors, healthcare, and transport sectors. Postgraduate study in design or related fields is also an option for those wishing to develop specialist expertise or pursue research careers.