The Masterstudio Scenography course at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW equips students with staging knowledge and the tools to translate complex social themes into staged spaces.

School: Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW
Course: Masterstudio Scenography
Location: Basel, Switzerland
Course dates: September 2025 to July 2027 (three or four semesters starting annually)
Application deadline: Annually in March, continuous enrolment

The Institute of Contemporary Design Practices (ICDP) at the Basel Academy of Art and Design offers a unique programme at the campus, featuring the Masterstudio Design and three studios: industrial design, fashion design, and scenography. To fully harness the potential of design as a practice that shapes living environments and thus impacts the world around us in response to today's urgent issues, we have made the studios more permeable. We offer our students—currently from over 17 nations—training in design, space, fashion, art and related disciplines, allowing them to collaborate and network internationally with each other, faculty, visiting lecturers and experts from both academic and practical fields.

The Masterstudio Design at the Institute of Contemporary Design Practices (ICDP) is composed of three studios: Masterstudio Industrial Design, Masterstudio Scenography and Masterstudio Fashion Design. Each studio has a disciplinary focus. In addition, the research discourse of the ICDP focuses on Digital Integration, Design Cultures and Circular Design and is reflected and communicated multi-dimensionally.

In the Masterstudio Scenography, complex social, political and ecological contents are translated into accessible spatial images, and staged spaces with narrative qualities and social relevance are created. The Masterstudio Scenography sees itself as a discursive community and physical infrastructure of collective research for the experimental spatial communication of relevant content.

Practices of scenographic design in the context of public, semi-public and private spaces are explored in the Masterstudio Scenography and new narrative formats are developed that are positioned between installation, exhibition, performance, stage design, augmented reality and virtual reality.

In the first two semesters, the Masterstudio Scenography proposes design projects on current issues. This is when the tools of staging and spatial-dramaturgical conception – in particular the scenographic score and the storyboard – are introduced and tested.

In the course of the second semester, students will also begin to work on the individual conception of the topic for their master's thesis, which concludes the program. The project-based written and practical master's thesis can be completed in either one semester (full-time) or two semesters (part-time). The choice of the extended project format – installation, exhibition, performance, stage design, augmented reality, virtual reality, etc. – is left to the students. The choice of mentors depends on the requirements of the project format and its content.

"What makes the Masterstudio Design at the Institute of Contemporary Design Practices (ICDP) at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW so special is the interaction between the three studios, Industrial Design, Scenography and Fashion Design. While each studio has a strong disciplinary focus, collaboration and exchange between the three disciplines is an essential part of the programme. Students also get the opportunity to complete their MA thesis as a team, which promotes a reality-based approach to work."

Find out more about the course and apply ›

Image: Project Clara Sollberger, photo by Camilla Fivian

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