As a place of experimentation and development of projects based on a wide and diversified vision of design, the ESADSE Post-Degree “Design and Research” operates at the same time as a creation laboratory and a project incubator. Whatever the field of design in which it develops (object, product or service design, graphic, digital or sound design), the research is included as a tool of action, of distortion and transformation of the real world; and the designer is regarded as being a vector of questioning of our ways of life and our relationships with objects, signs and contemporary environments – the designer is at the same time a revealing of today’s mutations and an actor of these evolutions.
The research students are lead to develop a project directed by themes decided in cooperation with them until a level of formalisation allowing them to assure the production, the diffusion and the communication in the better conditions, as well as taking part in the development and the shaping of the review Azimuts.
Able of being, single-handedly, the object of a research project, the review Azimuts represents at the same time a graphic experimentation field, a place of thinking and research and a communication support for projects. The name of the review suggests a wide and diversified approach of design. It is interested not only in all the fields of design under its historical and theoretical aspects, but also in all the stages of the design process: research and conception, production, diffusion. Its aim is not to comment on the news but to reveal the essential issues of design and to open up the debate. Semi-annual, printed in 3000 copies and internationally distributed, it has a unique place in the scene of actual design reviews.
The research students receive a €4000 grant for research, a place of work dedicated and they can rely upon the presence of a supervisory team of three permanent members, and of punctual intervening people approached according to the nature of the projects. They can access as well all the resources, human as material, of the School. As from Juily 2009, date of removal of the School to the site of Cité du Design, they will enjoy a wider space of work and all the new infrastructures and resources of the School and Cité du Design.
The promotion and diffusion of projects is guaranteed by the review Azimuts and by various operations developed according to the specificity of projects. With a duration of one year, the Design & Research Post Degree represents a cycle of excellence opened to graduates and young designers and researchers as national as international, coming from all the fields of design and research in design, within the limit of 10 places.
