The Design Department delivers the shared first-year foundation curriculum for students entering design disciplines at the China Academy of Art. Integrating art, humanities, and emerging technologies, the programme establishes a common foundation for students progressing to the Schools of Visual Communication, Fashion Design, Innovation Design, Industrial Design, Crafts, Architecture, and Sculpture and Public Art, as well as specialist programmes in Visual Communication Design, Fashion Design, Digital Media Art, Art and Technology, Product Design, Environmental Design, Public Art, Ceramic Art and Design, and Crafts.
Responding to rapid developments in digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and global cultural change, the programme prepares students for contemporary design practice through an interdisciplinary approach to learning. It cultivates five core capacities—aesthetic judgement, critical observation, storytelling, analytical thinking, and creative development—guiding students from embodied perception and material investigation to meaning-making and formal innovation. Through interdisciplinary inquiry and engagement with real-world challenges, students develop the critical and creative skills essential for future design practice.
Curriculum
The curriculum is organised around four interconnected themes: perceiving the world, understanding the world, expressing ideas, and creating new possibilities. Within this framework, the department has developed an interdisciplinary 1+2+4+N curriculum that integrates studio practice, humanities, technology, and cross-disciplinary learning.
The curriculum is structured as follows:
1-Foundation Studio: Body introduces design through embodied experience, encouraging students to understand the world through observation, movement, and sensory perception.
2-Humanities and Technology provide complementary perspectives. Humanities: Field Research explores social and cultural contexts through fieldwork, while Artificial Intelligence and Creative Practice introduces digital tools and emerging technologies that support contemporary design processes.
4-Four Foundation Studies courses—Object Studies, Context, Composition, and Movement—develop students' abilities in research, analysis, meaning-making, formal exploration, and dynamic expression.
N-A range of elective and interdisciplinary learning opportunities encourages students to broaden their knowledge and connect ideas across different fields of practice.
Studio workshops, collaborative projects, and international exchange are integrated throughout the programme, providing opportunities for experimentation, research, and creative collaboration while fostering an educational environment where art, humanities, and technology intersect.
