Design (Bachelor)

Table of contents

Short description

This track is open both for Industrial Design students as well as students with a Communication/Graphic Design background.

As part of your exchange semester, you will study in a long-term design project as well as a short-term design project that will be taught in English, depending on your disciplinary focus this will either be a project with an industrial design focus or with a communication design focus. The topics of the project modules change with each semester, themes are prompted by current events and societal discourses, the evolving roles of design in industry and design practice and their relationship to emergent technologies. The modules are taught as studio-based projects via a range of formats including workshops, guest lectures, presentations and consultations.

In addition to this as well as mandatory language courses, you can attend a range of extra-curricular courses on a variety of subjects such as Design Thinking, Experiments in Moulded Forms, Art and Architecture in Berlin or Becoming a Global Graduate. We offer enough courses on this track for you to gain 30 ECTS credits during your semester at HTW Berlin.

Please find the general course descriptions below.  Unfortunately, as the topics of the design projects are determined only a few weeks before the semester start, it is not possible for us to provide you with specific course details in advance. Before the start of your semester at the HTW we offer a consultation meetings with members of staff from our Design department who will give you more detailed information on the specific project topics offered during your exchange.

The Design study programme is only offered during winter semesters.

Requirements for admission

In order to be admitted and to succeed in this track, you have to fulfill certain prerequisites:

  • You are an enrolled student at a partner university of HTW Berlin.
  • Your partner university has a valid cooperation agreement for this thematic track
  • You will have covered at least three semesters in a design study programme prior to enrollment at our university.
  • As an applicant, you will go through an additional selection process at HTW Berlin based on a portfolio of your past work which you have to submit along with your general application.
  • An advanced level of B2 in English is compulsory.
  • You have to choose courses for your learning agreement that are worth at least 20 ECTS

Programme parts

During your semester or year at HTW Berlin, you are required to select a combination of different programme parts:

  • Core Courses, i.e. specific classes of your thematic track (at least 20 ECTS credits)
  • German as a Foreign Language ( 4 ECTS)
  • Please note that aside from to the core courses there are a number of modules that may be selected for the learning agreement but admission will be dependent on capacity and will need to be agreed with the respective module leaders. The foundational design courses of the first two semesters of the communication design programme cannot be selected for the learning agreement.

Courses offered