Justin McGuirk appointed head of Design Academy Eindhoven’s Design Curating and Writing programme
Design News
Justin McGuirk has been appointed head of Design Academy Eindhoven’s Design Curating and Writing programme. He is a writer, critic and curator based in London.
The new Design Curating and Writing programme offers students the possibility to critically research how current developments in design are addressed and represented.
For Design Academy Eindhoven this is about adding a level of intellectual depth to an institution that already produces some of the world’s most sophisticated design graduates, says Justin McGuirk.
Design has gained relevance in the last decade by keeping abreast with rapid developments in cultural, social, political, and technological domains. This, however, must be backed up with new formats for presenting and communicating the efforts of practitioners.
The discipline has emerged as a kind of meta-discipline of the early 21st-century, says McGuirk. A discipline capable of addressing complex issues at multiple scales. Now we need critics and curators who are able to do justice to that role.
McGuirk sees huge advantages in starting this course at a design school (as distinct from a university) where successful applicants will work closely with students from the three existing Masters programmes – Information Design, Contextual Design, and Social Design.
“I see a great opportunity for burgeoning writers and curators to be embedded among design practitioners,” he says. “Here they can be exposed to and forge alliances with designers. The other advantage is a design-style education encourages students to self-initiate and to develop their own practices.”
There has also been talk within Design Academy Eindhoven about how too often design writers and curators are educated in art meaning they come to look at design with an art perspective. To train design writers and curators from within the design world - especially given the growth of design’s reach - has become urgent.
Application deadline for Design Academy Eindhoven Masters courses is May 25th 2015.
