Product & Furniture Design MA
Subject and course type
- Architecture and interiors
- Design
- Postgraduate
Challenge, expand, and progress definitions of design with Kingston University’s Product & Furniture Design MA. Kingston is ranked Top 10 in the UK for Art & Design (The Complete University Guide 2026).
You are reading:
Create positive change for people, communities and places
Collaborate with industry professionals to expand your design practice
The Product and Furniture Design MA course at Kingston School of Art welcomes designers from varied disciplines who want to redefine the making of products and furniture.
We see conventional notions of product and furniture design as a starting point – not a limit – to our individual and collective output.
We are about the real and the imagined design, creating positive change for people, communities and places.
We are interested in the making of design and who does it, the economies of design and who can access it, and how design responds to current and emerging needs and behaviours.
We ‘make’ and ‘do’ through a studio and workshop culture that is experimental and evolves both the theoretical and practical.
We collaborate with students from other courses in the Design School, brands, organisations, and manufacturers to address design challenges beyond the university.
Previous project partners have included: IKEA, Camden Town Brewery, Magis, The Leathersellers Foundation, Travel Things Museum and Herman Miller.
You will build a portfolio that positions you for future design practice.
The course concludes with an external London exhibition – attended by design professionals and the press.
See what we are up to on the Product & Furniture Design MA Instagram.
Join a creative and collaborative environment that challenges conventional thinking:
Redefine your design practice with this globally respected course, situated at Knights Park campus:
- This course is open to designers from varied backgrounds who want to challenge, expand, and progress product and furniture design definitions.
- You can benefit from expert tutors, professional designers, and specialist practitioners, as well as field trips, workshops and talks, and opportunities for external collaboration.
- You can focus on product or furniture design for the real and the imagined, creating positive change for people, communities and places.
Student work
-
Robert Radcliffe
Re-Thatched
-
Zikai Peng
Touch Intelligence
-
Jiseon Kim
Future Insect Chocolate
-
Oscar Feria Bright
Minimo
-
Jana-Aimee Wiesenberger
See Tang
-
Matthew Perchard
Tide
-
Angela Ford
Raw Origins
-
Natchar Sawatdichai
Qualified
-
Martin Cremer
Kleptopoly
-
Oscar Feria Bright
A Sense of Nature
Why choose this course
At Kingston, you'll join a community passionate about designing, making, and redefining the discipline of product and furniture design. This course encourages experimentation and collaboration across disciplines and externally to support future design practice.
You'll gain insights into areas such as material exploration, research methods, and the cultural contexts for design. Through live projects with industry partners, you'll develop your professional practice.
With access to state-of-the-art workshops, facilities and the guidance of leading practitioners and academics, you'll develop your ability to design products and furniture for real, imagined, and future scenarios. Reviews, group discussions, workshops, and a supportive studio culture will help you situate your practice.
We ‘make' and ‘do' through an experimental studio and workshop culture that evolves both the theoretical and practical. Beyond practical approaches, you’ll question the economies of design, who can access it, and how design responds to current and emerging needs and behaviours.
At Kingston, you'll build skills in:
- Innovative thinking and opportunity-finding
- Iterative making and advanced prototyping techniques
- Positioning your design practice
You’ll benefit from top-quality teaching at Kingston University. We ranked Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework, and our staff are leading practitioners and academics in product design, furniture design, social design, strategic design, innovation design, and related topics.
Explore, collaborate and share ideas in our state-of-the-art workshop facilities, designed by Stirling Prize-winning studio, Haworth Tompkins. Facilities are open to all Kingston University students, and include:
- 3D workshops, with spaces for ceramics, concrete, resin-casting, plastics, metalwork, woodwork, bronze-casting foundry, set design and large scale model making.
- Animation and post-production studios.
- A digital media workshop.
- Knitting and sewing workshops with digital and analogue facilities, plus a working dress archive including from 1750 to the present day.
- A HackSpace for collaborative, creative, solutions-focused projects.
- A letterpress and printmaking workshop.
- A moving image workshop, with studios, an editing suite and industry-standard equipment.
- A fully-equipped photography workshop.
Kingston University has two on-site galleries, which offer exciting opportunities for career progression. Grade II-listed Dorich House is the former home of the sculptor Dora Gordine, while the Stanley Picker Gallery is one of the UK’s leading university galleries. Our Knights Park campus also has a bookable project space for large-scale exhibitions.
The Complete University Guide 2026 ranks us in the Top 10 in the UK for Art & Design – covers Fashion, Fashion Promotion and Communication, Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration Animation, Interior Design, and Product and Furniture Design.
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students benefit from joining a creative community where we encourage collaborative working and critical practice.
Our workshops and labs are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Student work
-
Elena Kasabova Petkova
Make Rainbow Play
-
Simon Roberts
StickBrick
-
Diana Moon
Mira
-
Irene Paltre
Drawn
-
Emily Rubin
The Bowel Movement
-
Pin Chun Shih
Be
-
James Fender
Insieme
-
Advait Naik
Alt-eractive
Course content
The course offers a hands-on design approach, including research techniques, participatory methods, experimental making, prototyping, and testing with intended audiences. You'll work in the studio and workshops on specific projects reflective of the course's modules. Activities can include specialist lectures, workshop inductions, group and individual tutorials, seminars, and symposiums.
You'll think critically about product and furniture design and your developing practice, engaging with related theoretical and contextual studies. You'll be encouraged to bring your interests and experiences to the project briefs – to explore aspects of the product and furniture design discipline that resonate with you. You'll need to be self-directed, reflective, and practical in your approach, with direction and purpose.
This course is part of the Design School's postgraduate programme. The structure, shared with students from other design courses, enables you to explore your specialist interests within an integrative learning environment that provides an understanding of the value and role of interdisciplinary methods and ways of working. The influences and impact of thinking from other related design subjects on your specialist study is an essential aspect of the identity and the community of interdisciplinary practice at masters level in the Design School.
Modules
The two shared modules of the Design School's postgraduate framework both commence with a symposium, in which high-profile external speakers present their work and contribute to a debate on a topic of relevance to all courses in the Framework.
Core modules
30 credits
This module establishes that research is integral to the design process, and developing a robust understanding of practical, theoretical, and material approaches to it, is fundamental to enquiry-led practice. You are therefore asked to explore a diverse range of multidisciplinary practice-based research methods through engagement with externally facing, social, political, cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts.
Throughout this module you will be expected to engage with how research is part of the making process and can become outcome in itself. We will consider how the designer can make knowledge public, through the design of information, artefacts, narratives, and spaces. The module is workshop based, taking a dialogic and discursive approach to learning. You are encouraged to co-create the curriculum to create an expanded, collaborative set of cultural references, critical tools, and research resources.
To support your personal and professional development the module asks you to consider your own capabilities, values, and ethics as a researcher, and to articulate how that underpins your work. This critical reflection is presented as essential to informing effective decision making within professional practice. Collaborative work is integrated into the curriculum in a supportive studio culture where diverse knowledge is shared.
30 credits
This module establishes that many future jobs do not yet exist, so there are opportunities for you to play a part in co-creating them. You are therefore asked to critically consider current roles for designers, emerging fields of design, and how we might reframe, or even reinvent, our future design practice.
Throughout this module you will be expected to take an unbounded approach to design, using ‘what-if’ questions to open spaces for critical debate and imaginative thought. Through projects and workshops (Element 1) we will anticipate new multidimensional and hybrid practices and investigate the possibilities of designer as maker / curator / social innovator / educator / activist. This exploration will support you producing a Major Project Proposal (Element 2) for a sustained independent project realised in TB3.
To support your personal and professional development the module enables you to build confidence, independence, agile thinking, and resilience. We will collectively map the pluriverse of design opportunities and professions as a means of positioning your practice ambitions within a rapidly changing world. Future skills will be developed that are not only valuable to the creative industries, but to the global economy: analytical skills, adaptability, communication, criticality.
30 credits
This module provides a dedicated product and furniture design study opportunity. It occurs in Teaching Block 1. Students are offered a number of optional and compulsory briefs engaging both practical and theoretical design faculties.
Briefs are open to individual interpretation, designed to promote creative independence and establish the benchmark of Level 7 critical expectation at the outset of the student experience.
The briefs encourage engagement with a number of key principles and processes that students need to develop to prepare them for a capstone project later in their studies.
30 credits
This Teaching Block 2 module extends and builds directly upon the dedicated product and furniture design study experience of Teaching Block 1. It runs in parallel with the Creative Futures module DE7301 on the full time mode and exercises independent, focused practical design research to underpin the Major Project proposal undertaken within DE7301.
The module aims to prepare students to begin realisation of their Major (capstone) Project upon completion. Students take responsibility for either continuing to develop their thematic practical design enquiries already established in Context I, refining and editing material and developing new research and study as necessary, or embarking upon new self-initiated enquiries.
The module consolidates the role of practical design experimentation as a key element of the design research process and helps establish credibility for progression on to the Major Project. Students should become increasingly confident about moving into realms of uncertainty and exploring unfamiliar design territory, taking risks and articulating personal viewpoint. They are encouraged to explore and use industry networks and contacts outside the Faculty to expand their knowledge and outlook, further lending their study rigour and credibility.
60 credits
In this module, you will define and realise your Major Project. The module establishes a space for developing your future practice through a substantial body of research and experimentation, and the integration of learning from previous modules. You will be supported through tutorials, reviews and peer-to-peer activities. You will be expected to bring an individual critical position to your project, in an expanded mode of your discipline and its possibilities.
Optional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Optional modules
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject.
Career opportunities
Graduates of this MA have gone on to design innovative products for global companies, launch their own design studios, progress to PhD study, and lead sustainability initiatives in the design sector.
Graduates work in:
- product design
- furniture design
- social design
- circular design
- biophilic design
- strategic design
- CMF design
- in-house and at design consultancies
- Start-ups
- social enterprises
- government organisations
Employers of recent Product & Furniture Design MA graduates include, Asus, Bill Amberg, Cassina, CircleSquare, the Design Museum, FINH, Glithero, Goldfinch, Ice Breaker, Lenovo, Made, New Territory, Notpla, Pentatonic, and Surrey County Council.
You will collaborate with students from other courses in the Design School, as well as renowned brands, organisations, and manufacturers. Previous project partners include IKEA, Camden Town Brewery, Magis, Travel Things Museum and Herman Miller.
The course concludes with an external London exhibition – attended by design professionals and the press. Our proximity to London allows students to engage with world-famous museums and galleries, design consultancies, start-ups and social enterprises. We encourage students to be inspired and make themselves known within creative professional environments.
Teaching and assessment
Assessment will be made at the completion of each module. Module marks are added to achieve a total final mark. Assessment will be made through practical design projects, presentations, main masters project and exhibition.
When not attending timetabled sessions, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This typically involves reading and analysing articles, regulations, policy documents and key texts, documenting individual projects and preparing coursework assignments.
Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, the library and CANVAS, the University's online virtual learning platform.
At Kingston University, we know that postgraduate students have particular needs and therefore we have a range of support available to help you during your time here.
A course is made up of modules, and each module is worth a number of credits. You must pass a given number of credits in order to achieve the award you registered on, for example 360 credits for a typical undergraduate course or 180 credits for a typical postgraduate course. The number of credits you need for your award is detailed in the programme specification which you can access from the link at the bottom of this page.
One credit equates to 10 hours of study. Therefore 180 credits across a year (typical for a postgraduate course) would equate to 1,800 notional hours. These hours are split into scheduled and guided. On this course, the percentage of that time that will be scheduled learning and teaching activities is shown below. The remainder is made up of guided independent study.
- 16% scheduled learning and teaching
The exact balance between scheduled learning and teaching and guided independent study will be informed by the modules you take.
Your course will primarily be delivered in person. It may include delivery of some activities online, either in real time or recorded.
Assessment typically comprises a practical project, visual summary, critical reflection and report
The approximate percentage for how you will be assessed on this course is as follows, though depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose:
- Year 1: Coursework 100%
We aim to provide feedback on assessments within 20 working days.
External exhibition
View images from the Product & Design MA external exhibition held in 2023 at Herman Miller, London.
-
-
James Fender
Objects in Motion
-
Emily SK
Feeling Noughty
-
Pin Chun Shih
Be
-
Sneha Gayathri Kamarapu
A 'Cha'
-
James Fender
Insieme
-
Martin Cremer
Kleptopoly
-
-
-
Rosa Tooke-Cheesbrough
Tune In
Fees and funding
| Fee category | Annual Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £12,900 |
| Part Time | £7,095 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £23,700 |
| Part Time | £13,035 |
| Fee category | Annual Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £12,400 |
| Part Time | £6,820 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £21,800 |
| Part Time | £11,990 |
Fees for future course years
Part time
If you start your second year straight after Year 1, you will pay the same fee for both years.
If you take a break before starting your second year, or if you repeat modules from Year 1 in Year 2, the fee for your second year may increase.
Funding support for postgraduate students
If you are a UK student living in England and under 60, you can apply for a loan to study for a postgraduate degree. Find out more through the government's website.
Scholarships and bursaries
For students interested in studying Product & Furniture Design MA at Kingston, there are several opportunities to seek funding support:
The Inspire the Future Scholarship offers a 40% reduction in fees for taught masters or postgraduate diploma courses with September start dates. 20 scholarships are available for progressing Kingston University graduates.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Inspire the Future Scholarship page.
International postgraduate students could receive up to £5,000 towards tuition in their first year of study.
For more information on how to apply for these scholarships, visit the International Scholarship page.
If you are a Kingston University undergraduate student progressing to a postgraduate degree (taught or research), you could get a 15% reduction in tuition fees.
For more information on how to apply for this scholarship, visit the Postgraduate Progression Scholarship page.
Kingston University offers a 10% discount on full and part-time postgraduate degree course tuition fees to our alumni.
For more information on how to apply for this discount, visit our alumni discount page.
Additional course costs
Some courses may require additional costs beyond tuition fees. When planning your studies, you’ll want to consider tuition fees, living costs, and any extra costs that might relate to your area of study.
Your tuition fees include costs for teaching, assessment and university facilities. So your access to libraries, shared IT resources and various student support services are all covered. Accommodation and general living expenses are not covered by these fees.
Where applicable, additional expenses for your course may include:
Our libraries have an extensive collection of books and journals, as well as open-access computers and laptops available to rent. However, you may want to buy your own computer or personal copies of key textbooks. Textbooks may range from £50 to £250 per year. And a personal computer can range from £100 to £3,000 depending on your course requirements.
While most coursework is submitted online, some modules may require printed copies. You may want to allocate up to £100 per year for hard-copies of your coursework. It’s worth noting that 3D printing is never compulsory. So if you choose to use our 3D printers, you’ll need to pay for the material. This ranges from 3p per gram to 40p per gram.
Kingston University will pay for all compulsory field trips. Fees for optional trips can range from £30 to £350 per trip.
Your tuition fees don’t cover travel costs. To save on travel costs, you can use our intersite bus service. This route links the campuses and halls of residence with local train stations - Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, and Norbiton.
If you choose to do a placement year, travel costs will vary depending on your location. These costs could be up to £2,000.
How to apply
Before you apply
Please read the entry criteria carefully to make sure you meet all requirements before applying.
How to apply online
Use the course selector drop-down at the top of this page to choose your preferred course, start date and mode, then click 'Apply now'. You will be taken to our Online Student Information System (OSIS) where you will complete your application.
If you’re starting a new application, you’ll need to select ‘new user’ and set up a username and password. This will allow you to save and return to your application.
Application deadlines
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Applications will close when the course is full.
Information required to confirm your place
If English is not your first language, we will require proof of your proficiency to allow us to confirm your place on the course. This will generally be either an IELTS or TOEFL test certificate, which can be forwarded to us after you have submitted your application. If you do not hold a formal English language qualification, please indicate how you have acquired your proficiency in written and spoken English.
After you have applied
For courses that select on application alone, applicants should normally receive an initial decision or a request for more information within four to six weeks of receipt of their application. Our admissions team will notify you of the decision by email.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Find out more about course changes
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
