The V&A/RCA MA History of Design draws on the exceptional resources and national and international networks of two world-leading centres of excellence for scholarship and creativity, the RCA and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). With a base at the RCA and dedicated programme rooms and library at the V&A, since its foundation in 1983, this pioneering programme has earned a worldwide reputation as the leading MA programme in the field. Our research-led teaching and experiential methods inspire and train future leaders in the field.

The MArch Design Practice is a one-year programme that supports architects, designers, and spatial practitioners’ creative and critical engagement with the design of the built environment. With climate as a central focus, students will consider how reuse, materials, waste, and embodied carbon intersect with economics, politics, and identity to produce new opportunities for design practice in the just transition toward a fair and flourishing world. Students will critically engage with the planetary implications of construction and make bold, rigorous and informed design propositions through which a world otherwise can be built.

New for 2023. The Design Futures programme is designed to enable you to work across all the disciplines and beyond, to build future-shaping knowledge and skills, address the challenges we face, envision and then navigate towards a preferred future through design-led interventions. It will allow you to ask the ‘big questions’ about disruptive innovation, ethics for design, design resilience, shared values, future forecasting and design for safety.

The Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) programme is open to architecture and engineering graduates seeking knowledge and skills in architectural design science, who want to experiment with how these can be applied within new production paradigms.