MA Design Research, Writing, and Criticism Curriculum
This rigorous one-year program equips students with tools for researching, chronicling, and interpreting all aspects of design. Each student is asked to identify an individual research territory to explore during the year. Through workshops, seminars, lectures, and site-visits, students learn about the issues and policies that shape the man-made environment; deploy research methods, reporting techniques, and theoretical models; while experimenting with media for communicating their research, such as writing, podcasting, video, exhibitions, and events.
The MA department has its own floor in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Each student has a desk space within an open-plan, light-filled workspace. The program takes advantage of its New York location with frequent visits to the city’s design collections, archives, libraries, design and architecture studios, and behind-the-scenes access to new exhibitions, buildings, and urban planning ventures. With more than 30 guest lecturers and critics visiting the department per semester to supplement the core curriculum, the program connects students to inspirational mentors and helps them to forge relationships with potential employers and colleagues.
General Requirements
- Successful completion of 30 credits, including all required courses, administrative requirements and the thesis project. Documentation of all thesis projects must be on file in the Design Research, Writing and Criticism Department to be eligible for degree conferral.
- A matriculation of one academic year. Students must complete their degree within two years, unless given an official extension by the provost.
- Students are required to maintain a minimum grade point average of 3.0 (B) in order to remain in good academic standing.
Note: Departmental requirements are subject to change by the department chair if the chair deems that such change is warranted.
Required Courses
Course Requirements
Fall Semester
DRG-5040 Research and Writing I: Journalism Tools and Inspiration
DRG-5041 Research and Writing II: Narrative Nonfiction Writing
DRG-5060 Approaches to Design History: Excavating Narratives
DRG-5080 Contemporary Issues in Design: Public Space in New York City
DRG-5083 Contemporary Issues in Design: Studio Visits
DRG-5110 Cultural Theory: Critical Frameworks for Design Researchers
DRG-5200 Thesis Development Workshop
Spring Semester
DRG-5540 Research and Writing III: The Form and Function of Texts
DRG-5541 Research and Writing IV: Editing, Publishing, and the Public
DRG-5548 Applied Media Workshop: Podcast Reporting and Production
DRG-5552 Applied Media Workshop: Finding your Medium
DRG-5900 Thesis Research, Writing and Production
DRG-5903 Thesis Advising
General Course Listing
General Course Listing
The following reflects the 2025-2026 course offerings. For further details on individual courses, such as meeting days and times, please refer to the Graduate Course Listing.
DRG-5040
Research and Writing I: Journalism Tools and Inspiration
2 credits
This course explores writing as we move progressively through various forms—from short descriptions to brief reviews and news features. Students will work on writing about visual culture and developing skills for visual, object-based and research-driven writing. The course will highlight the possibilities and limitations of each form, and students are encouraged to explore the same subject at multiple lengths to see the possibilities each form allows.
DRG-5041
Research and Writing II: Narrative Nonfiction Writing
2 credits
Expanding the focus of DRG-5040, Research and Writing I, this course will include longer-form writing, exploring how writing shifts from shorter pieces to long reviews and, ultimately, the essay. We will probe style and voice and how the two develop as writing expands in length. Emphasis is given to techniques that use language vividly and precisely in writing and to visual objects and research. Distinguished writers and editors will visit and share their approaches and ideas to writing. Each session will have two elements—a seminar where we discuss the work of other writers and critics as a guide to our own, and a workshop where we critically discuss each student’s writing. Key to writing is reading and considering other writers’ ideas from established critics to our colleagues. Important to the class is an open approach to ideas, to points of view, to interpretation, and to looking and exploring.
DRG-5060
Approaches to Design History: Excavating Narratives
3 credits
The history of design can be best understood when explored through a spectrum of experiences: makers and users, intentions and consequences, experiences and interpretations. Design influences culture at every level, at the level of individual behavior, the construction of community and our foundational systems and structures—businesses, governments, civic institutions, systems of belief. To what extent do we understand the underlying belief systems that drive those systems? As design writers, what responsibility do we have to understand, investigate, critique and expound on our analysis of the larger social dynamics at play? In this course, we consider ways of approaching design history. Beginning with an introduction to the field of design history itself, our episodic structure zooms in on case studies across various periods and types of design: from the chair to the room, exhibitions, graphics, and digital technology. While examining this handful of moments within an expansive field, students are encouraged to consider relevance to contemporary discourse as well as biases and gaps—both here and in “the canon.” Together we will discuss how ideas in history inform design thinking and making, and attempt to understand how we construct cultural narrative and meaning through history. Reading and writing about design requires a broad social lens focused on those whose stories are often left untold alongside those who have gained a megaphone to amplify their voices.
DRG-5080
Contemporary Issues in Design: Public/Private Space in New York City
2 credits
For this course we will visit iconic New York City public places as a group and try to understand how they came to exist, how they’ve evolved over time and how they change. We’ll focus on places that are hybrid, both public and private, including privately-financed public places. Students will also visit and analyze other kinds of places, some truly public and others privately-owned places that function as public ones, such as hotel lobbies and office tower atria, as well as traditionally public places like libraries that are increasingly dependent on private funding. Students will be asked to evaluate every aspect of their design and consider whether they serve the public, or which public they serve. They’ll have the opportunity to meet designers of public places and those who advocate for their creation and maintenance. Assignments will include readings on the history and culture of New York’s public places, critiques of those places and student presentations. Students will be required to write one critical essay and make a final presentation, which will also exist in written form. The goal is to help students develop and refine their voices as critics and thoughtful observers of the urban landscape.
DRG-5803
Contemporary Issues in Design: Studio Visits
2 credits
Students in this course examine the building blocks of researching and writing feature-length nonfiction narratives. We begin with a warm-up workshop focused on objective versus subjective approaches to writing about design. The next segment focuses on interviewing skills, while the final segment asks students to develop narratives from material found in selected archives. Students will explore interviewing skills and best practices, conducting several interviews to produce a written profile piece. A selection of New York’s most significant and esoteric public and private archives, collections and libraries will be visited, and students will practice constructing compelling visual and written narratives based on individual discoveries and research.
DRG-5110
Cultural Theory: Critical Frameworks for Design Researchers
3 credits
This seminar exposes students to key issues in cultural theory and criticism, with a view to the study and interpretation of designed space and objects. Special consideration will be given to the development of critical positions that serve as a lens for reading the complexity of the built environment within a larger context. Sessions will focus on key texts drawn from disciplines that include philosophy, critical theory, art criticism, cultural studies, anthropology and media studies. These readings offer different perspectives on cultural economies, politics and systems of meaning, with a goal of helping students define their own critical framework for research.
DRG-5200
Thesis Development Workshop
2 credits
Through group meetings and one-on-one consultations, each student will choose a thesis topic that is innovative and rich enough to withstand extended inquiry. Students will be guided through the process of identifying problems, developing critical questions, and developing primary and secondary sources as they embark upon research for their thesis portfolio. Students will explore research methodologies and resources related to design research as they develop a thesis research question and build a research dossier to support their writing.
DRG-5540
Research and Writing III: The Form and Function of Texts
2 credits
This seminar/workshop offers a key element toward completing your thesis. Together we will pose questions of writing and of research, and explore how to integrate the two. We will analyze various essays to examine diverse research methodologies, the styles of writing and forms of knowledge that emerge from them, and experiment with developing and implementing our own research approaches. The purpose is to craft inquiry into text through description and analysis in pursuit of writing that is vibrant, truthful, informed and accessible. In each class session, one student will present an assigned essay following a set rubric. The presenting student will also share a selection of their own thesis, written using the research methods described in the assigned essay. Presentation of essays include each student’s own experience pursuing the described research methodology. The class will discuss the methodology as it relates to the thesis topic.
DRG-5541
Research and Writing IV: Editing, Publishing and the Public
2 credits
Over the course of the three segments of the research and writing curriculum, we have learned how to develop a position, to structure it with effective text, and fortify it with research and interviews. This final segment will look at the roles that style and copyediting play in connecting that text and position to a public. To do that, we will create our own newsroom: each student will edit a piece from another student, working with their respective writer to take a manuscript from its rough state to a publication-ready finish. We will examine the structure of the editorial process and which resources to use at each step along the way. The aim of the course is not to imbibe and memorize the entire Chicago Manual of Style or the forest of other style guides, but rather understand what they are, why they matter and how to use them.
DRG-5548
Applied Media Workshop: Podcasting Reporting and Production
2 credits
Old-time radio was often referred to as “the theater of the mind,” and the saying remains true; the intimacy of sound—one voice speaking directly to you—has power unmatched by other media. And in the midst of this new renaissance, audio journalism proves itself even more relevant for 21-century writers and content-makers. Even a visual realm like design has proven itself to be a rich topic for podcasts—see the success of Roman Mars’s show “99% Invisible.” In this course you will learn to create your own audio journalism that relates to design in the broadest sense. Your options for subject matter will be wide-ranging; what you will learn is how to communicate those ideas most effectively through sound. You’ll learn how to write for the ear rather than the eye; how to interview and gather sound; how to edit and mix audio; how to create narrative arcs and effective pacing. You’ll learn how to use sound to help set scenes and tell a story. You’ll learn how to ask good questions and pick good tape. And you will discover that it really is possible to make interesting, provocative and entertaining audio stories about design, architecture and the visual arts.
DRG-5552
Applied Media Workshop: Finding your Medium
2 credits
As students prepare to disembark from our program, they will want to apply the skills they have learned in coursework to real-world endeavors, and to think creatively about how they can translate their thesis research into a variety of media formats. In this course we will focus on developing strategies and methods for communicating your work to different audiences. Students will be presented with a series of prompts before class. The beginning of each class session will be spent developing responses to those prompts, and then workshopping prompts with each other and guest speakers. There may be short advanced readings related to each upcoming session. This course is designed to open students’ minds to the creative and entrepreneurial aspect of the design media and cultural landscape, and to compel students to examine new modes of communication and expression that will be of use to them in future endeavors. The bulk of the work for this course will be done in class, drawing upon students’ existing research and writing. Therefore, students are expected to respond to prompts in class, and engage in conversation as a group and with the guest speakers.
DRG-5900
Thesis Research, Writing and Production
4 credits
The thesis explores a particular research theme connected to design, architecture, or visual culture and that makes an original and significant contribution to knowledge. Working in consultation with their thesis advisors, students will develop detailed research plans, identify useful archives and sources, analyze the results of their research and develop a thesis portfolio, including a reflection essay, research dossier, podcast and 5,000 words of writing. Students will meet as a group for workshops and individually with their advisors during the writing and editing phases.
DRG-5903
Thesis Advising
2 credits
Every week students will meet individually or as a group with their thesis advisors during the writing and editing phases of the thesis. Material discussed will be the assignments from the concurrent research and development courses.
New York, NY 10011
