Studio head: Mgr. art. Jan Korabečný
Assistant: Mgr. art. Štěpán Soutner

The Industrial Design studio teaches students how to design high-quality products and it sees designing as inventing. Of all the Faculty’s studios, it lays the greatest emphasis on combining artistic talent and technical skills. That is also evident from the studio’s courses and assignments which are often carried out in cooperation with the technical faculties of the university. The teachers Jan Korabečný and Štěpán Soutner put particular stress on general practicability, the rules of physics, technical parameters and ethics in the designing of new products. The studio participates in many international projects, works in multidisciplinary teams and regularly cooperates on its assignments with business companies.

In the course of the semester, the students usually work on 2 to 3 assignments related to the future of mobility, social responsibility and the potential of new technologies. You can find below several examples of the studio’s projects from the past years.

Ideal applicants – who we look for:

• students of grammar schools, technical and artistic high-schools
• students with technical skills and artistic talent
• students with general knowledge, who like to create, experiment and present their ideas
• students with various interests through which they enrich their environment

Examples of the studio’s projects:

 Tram 2050

In cooperation with Škoda Transportation and the students of the Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Faculty of Health Studies of the University of West Bohemia, the students designed a tram of the future. The creation of the full-fledged design was regularly mentored by an expert from the partner company.

Water Rescue

The World Health Organisation estimates that 236,000 people drown worldwide every year. In cooperation with Taylor’s University Malaysia, the students of the Industrial Design studio designed a product aimed at reducing this number.

Collaborating in an international team and discussing their ideas in English, the students worked on social topic of global relevance.

Urban furniture designs for the City of Pilsen

A student competition aimed at creating designs of urban furniture (benches, public transport stops and other elements of the urban environment) to be installed in Pilsen.

The individual student designs were consulted with the representatives of the relevant municipal authorities and the local public transport provider. The project included also discussions with urban planners about city planning and visual smog.

Clay modelling workshop

A workshop organised in cooperation with a partner school from Germany and aimed at teaching the basics of clay modelling. The event included practical work on clay models of selected products, cooperation in international teams and experience sharing.

Industrial Design studio on instagram

Studio heads: doc. Mgr. Art. Jana Potiron, ArtD., MgA. Štěpán Rous, Ph.D.

Our studio is convinced that design can offer solutions for our everyday life as well as for serious social topics. Furniture and interior equipment affect the life that is going around and inside of them. Design can shape the interior, provide comforts, satisfy our needs, dominate the space around us or remain inconspicuous. We do not understand design only as something practical and useful. We believe in its ability to evoke emotions and be as expressive as a work of art, and as precise as a well-functioning machine. It can be serious and playful at the same time, democratic, but also critical.

Together we search for a new morphology of furniture and interior products, provide them with new functions, and try to think ahead. We encourage bold conceptual solutions that may overlap with art and site-specific installations, handcrafts and new technologies. The student assignments are often abstract and broadly related to the designing of furniture, lighting or small practical articles – but always with respect to the given interior and the preferences of the future users. Our students are not afraid to experiment with various materials and also to develop new materials. When drafting a concept, they always try to understand the relations between the product and its users. The students brainstorm together, search for innovative forms, work both individually and together on various projects and cooperate with production companies.

For us, design is above all a creative expression of intelligence, something that we enjoy. It is a special way of looking at things in our everyday life, searching for connections in untypical situations and drawing inspiration from various interactions between people and the world they live in.

Furniture and Interior Design studio on facebook

Studio head: MgA. Pavel Ivančic

Since April 2024, the studio is managed from Pavel Ivančic, who took over the management after fifteen years of doc. Helena Krbcová.

As the name suggests, the studio deals with the study of fashion in its broadest possible context, following also the development of our lifestyle and new technologies. We study the nature and philosophy of fashion as well as its history and modern trends. The essential prerequisite, however, is the creative potential of our students and the development of their talents in the relevant art disciplines. In the first years of the Bachelor’s programme, the students acquire the knowledge and expertise necessary to design clothes, shoes and accessories. In the Master’s programme, they combine their previously obtained skills to work on comprehensive projects covering all aspects of fashion and art design in this field. The study programme puts an emphasis on ideas and their representations, on artistic and technological experiments, and on a broad range of artisanal skills. The students receive both theoretical and practical training, as they process all their drafts and collections manually by themselves.

Studio head: doc. MgA. Gabriel Vach
Assistant: MgA. Markéta Kalivodová

“Ceramics is crazy, I hate it... But I still keep doing it.

I think that if you hate something so much, you just have to do it. You have to deal with it somehow.”

This confession of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was written on one of the walls of the Trade Fair Palace in Prague during the 2017 exhibition called Kneaded Knowledge. The Language of Ceramics. Ai Weiwei, who had participated in the curatorial and artistic preparation of that event, revealed in another part of the exhibition that ceramics represents for him a process that is too sophisticated to be enjoyed. However, clay is one of the first materials that mankind started working with, and it keeps fascinating and attracting us to the present day.

Ceramics is one of the disciplines that merge the old and the new in a natural way. You can use state-of-the-art technical methods such as 3D modelling and 3D printing, work with materials developed for the NASA space programme or dig for clay in the yard behind your house and use it – and you will still be doing ceramics.

In the Ceramic Design Studio we give our students guidance on functional design as well as on creative work. When they receive a utilitarian assignment with specific requirements for function or production technology in one semester, they will be assigned a formally less-constrained project in the next semester. That gives them more freedom of expression and opportunities to explore their own creativity and to work with new materials. We are convinced that they can benefit from both approaches: On the one hand, they will learn to think in technical terms, work within defined constraints and to present their work in an attractive way. On the other hand, they will learn to deal with the tasks at hand in a creative and confident manner, find their own creative style and will not be afraid to push and exceed boundaries.

Ceramic Design studio webpage
and presentation on instagram and facebook

Studio head: doc. MgA. Zdeněk Veverka
Assistant: MgA. Kateřina Klímová 

Take a look around and you will always find a product that could become a theme for a designer. Be it a small item, such as a button or a toothbrush, or a big sophisticated object, such as a train. You can work on all of them if you decide to study in our studio. You will gain experience in designing, just the way it is done in professional life. In the later years of your studies, you can use your skills in real projects commissioned by external producers. We have direct contacts with major producing companies and some of their employees are members of our evaluation boards. To facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the whole designing process, the curriculum includes topics that the students work on in teams with their peers from other faculties of our university. Another important feature of the studio is our technical equipment that includes a professional workshop where we can create models up to the size of a real car in the scale of 1:1. Why not use your creative potential in our studio?

Studio head: Prof. Ing. arch. Zdeněk Fránek
Assistants:   Ing. arch. Dana Nováková, Ing. arch. Dana Příhodová (maternity leave)

Environmental Design for Architecture is an innovative bachelor's and follow-up master's degree study specialisation. The whole study is focused on optimising human activities on Earth in all its scopes of activity, such as culture, sport, education, housing, recreation, industry, science, gastronomy, and the like. It actively responds to current market trends and requirements. Interdisciplinary sustainable design development is focused on landscape ecology, plant ecology, biodiversity, night darkness protection, environmental sociology, and more.

Students are able to effectively connect with expert architects, urbanists, biologists, botanists, sociologists, philosophers and others who, through their scientific activities, can influence the design of the environment they create.

Graduates will become useful correspondents of foreign teams, with whom they would exchange experiences and results of their work. They will be prepared as independent designers or as members of a design team to professionally assess and critically analyse the assigned task, offer multiple design proposals, select and defend the most suitable variant using separately obtained design information and then implement it in cooperation with the production. They will be able to publicly present the results of their own and team work and interpret their opinion, including the relevant formulation of arguments. The study and creative work will take place in the studio, as well as directly in the resolved area. Students will learn to implement their ideas and designs, either individually or within a team, in order to understand and experience that solving such a complex issue as the collision-free life of man on Earth should be a matter of course and currently already a necessity. It is both artistic and scientific, philosophical and psychological work. However, emphasis will always be placed on artistic value and responsibility towards the environment. “Aesthetics is not without ethics” is our studio’s credo.

Environmental Design for Architecture on facebook and instagram

Studio head: Mgr. Art. Jan Korabečný
Assistant: Mgr. art. Štěpán Soutner

In the Bachelor study program, the students become familiar with a wide range of instruments used by designers to turn their ideas into products that can be presented to a large audience. The curriculum focuses on the classical disciplines of visual arts, including both physical and computer-based modelling. You will master all the necessary techniques and get insights into virtual reality. You will learn how to conduct systematic research and think of new products in terms of productibility and general usefulness.

In the course of the study, you will gradually become acquainted with materials and craft skills. You will often transform your ideas into models and prototypes in our workshops, using CNC lathes and 3D printing. The study program is concluded with a Bachelor’s thesis, a project in which the students demonstrate the knowledge and skills obtained during their studies.

Design Modelling on instagram