Intelligent Mobility

There will be several opportunities to collaborate with others, but at a minimum, your programme will include 247.5 contact hours and 1552.5 independent study hours.

Contact hours can consist of lectures, seminars, tutorials, critical forums and workshops, among other types of teaching delivery. Teaching types included in your programme can consist of briefings, projects, tutorials, seminars, lectures, critical forums, technical inductions, technical workshops, offsite visits and blended learning. Y

Term 1

People and places (15 credits) provides a framework to understand how and where future mobility fits into a changing global landscape and how people and place connect through mobility. The unit aims to sensitise you to the scope and limits of different mobility typologies within the mobility mix. It highlights the need for design to meet broader infrastructural and social requirements.

Humanising technology (30 credits) explores how recent transformational mobility technologies such as autonomy and electrification can be interpreted to provide new and desirable human interactions in mobility. You are expected to gain a profound and critical understanding of emerging technologies and their place in future mobility design.

Term 2

Automotive transitions fundamentals (15 credits)

This unit focuses on the future of the automotive typology and asks you to reimagine how technology and social trends will influence future automotive design. The unit also allows you to select a specific area of focus and adopt an approach which explores techniques and questions unique to their chosen sub-sector.

School elective or IM Automotive transitions advanced (15 credits)

This unit enables you to undertake one of the schools of design elective or the IM programme Automotive Transitions advanced practice unit. SoD electives offer an applied focus to the topics, through the execution of project activities undertaken by students working in interdisciplinary teams drawn from across the School of Design programmes. The Intelligent Mobility unit provides a deeper context to the key elements of future automotive design, emphasising advanced manufacturing, socio-cultural issues and questions related to future business models.

The Grand Challenge (15 credits) challenges all students in the School of Design through a ‘wicked’ design problem that requires a cross-disciplinary approach to problem-solving involving an external international scientific or industry partner (or both). This unit and lecture series has successfully connected and disrupted disciplines, people, philosophies and approaches to design thinking while providing a unique networking opportunity. 

Terms 1 and 2:

AcrossRCA (30 credits) supports you in meeting the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams on a series of themed projects informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action and help demonstrate the contribution the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits) is the final master’s project and asks you to identify, develop and address a defined research question that is both socially relevant and technically challenging. The work must be documented at all stages for public dissemination. This will take the form of a physical and/or digital (virtual) exhibition of a selection of your work during three terms.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.