The thesis presentations for IED Milano’s Master of Arts begin today, marking the conclusion of the first cycle of the two-year programs in Visual Communication, Interior Design and Product Design.
Master of Arts Thesis | Academic Year 2025/2026
Date
06 July 2026
The theses are the result of two years of research, experimentation and design practice, developed within a shared methodological framework: DesignXCommons. This perspective invites a reconsideration of the role of design in relation to commons, communities, bodies, spaces and forms of knowledge.
The two-year program in Visual Communication presents individual research projects spanning editorial design, video installations, digital devices and other visual artefacts. The works explore a wide range of themes and imaginaries: from Persian culture and the Shahnameh to the perception of absence in an age of uncertainty; from the microscopic observation of moulds as a creative resource to design as an activist and pedagogical tool in dialogue with communities and educational contexts.
The theses from Interior Design - Spatial Practices for Gathering Culture investigate design as a tool for interpreting and transforming contemporary public space. Through collective and participatory approaches, the projects explore new forms of sharing, inclusion and appropriation of space, imagining collaborative ways of inhabiting the city.
The Product Design - Techno Bodies for Equal Futures program presents projects that reflect on product design as a means of supporting bodies, starting from the idea that every body and every identity follows principles of uniqueness rather than normality. The theses address themes related to prosthetics, accessibility and the relationship between anthropocentric and ecosystemic systems, proposing validated solutions oriented towards fairer and more reparative futures.
At the end of the thesis discussions, on 9 July at 5:00 PM, the exhibition DesignXCommons. Master of Arts Atlas #01 will open to the public.
The Atlas brings together the first thesis projects produced across the three Master of Arts programmes - Visual Communication, Product Design and Interior Design - presenting them in the form of an atlas. Each project occupies an equal and compressed portion of space, offering an overall view of the work developed across the disciplines.
The projects on display are organised into three thematic sections: Worlds in Common, Rituals for Resistance and Bodies in Becoming. Across these sections, recurring questions emerge: memory as a form of archive and transmission, the body as a political surface, and visibility as a field of tension between what is legible and what remains at the margins.
In this atlas, the notion of the commons extends beyond shared spaces and resources, touching the realm of knowledge itself. The thesis discussions and the exhibition therefore represent a first moment of public synthesis for IED Milano’s Second Level Academic Diplomas: an opportunity to present research, visions and design practices that question the present and imagine new forms of relation with the world.
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