Earlier this month, Parsons The New School for Design announced that it's launching a Master of Fine Arts in Industrial Design for fall 2015 enrollment. As a postscript to our recent D-School Futures series—in which we asked the chairs of several prominent design programs to reflect on the state of ID education—we caught up with Rama Chorpash to find out more about the thinking behind this new MFA. In addition to being an accomplished designer in his own right, Chorpash is the director of Parsons's existing BFA in product design; he developed the MFA program and will be serving as its director as well. (Ed. Note: He was also one of five designers who represented Staten Island in our "All-City All-Stars" exhibition for NYDW2012.]

Our New York–based readers may also want to mark their calendars for this Thursday evening, when Chorpash will co-moderate a panel discussion to celebrate the program's launch. The discussion topic is "Product City: Shortening the Supply Chain," and it will feature the founders of Makers Row and the head of responsible growth at Etsy. That event is free and open to the public—find the complete details here.

Core77: Who is this program for?

Our focus is on supporting both design professionals and recent graduates who want to advance in the field while forwarding the field itself. To this end, we'll also be accepting candidates from other disciplines to enrich studio culture and diversify knowledge and peer learning.

What sets this program apart from other MFAs in industrial design?

The program prepares the next generation of designers to navigate seemingly contradictory dichotomies—manufacturing and sustainability, consumerism and need, globalization and localization, offshoring and onshoring—with an eye toward reconciling them and shaping a more integrated future. To explore some of these tensions, The New School, as one of the only design-led universities globally, provides significant intellectual resources. Students have access to leading experts in economics, ethnography, environmental policy, sustainability management and so on. The program is located in the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons, the only integrated school of architecture, interior design, product design and lighting design in the United States. Our university has over 135 undergraduate and graduate degrees, minors, certificates and continuing education programs.

Distinctive to the curriculum are the local and global design studios, which involve significant off-site work and community engagement. In the first term, students will have the opportunity to do hands-on self-production, as well as conduct user testing in NYC. In the second term, they continue their industry-integrated approach by either visiting or working with international production and supply chains. Students utilize advanced making skills and critical inquiry to design products at various scales of production, from low-volume to high-volume—from desktop manufacturing to international global supply-chains.

Left: Rama Chorpash. Right: Inside the New School's Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. Interior photo by Bob Handleman

The program announcement says that its focus is designing "not only products and services but the industries which will shape them as well." Can you elaborate? How will you train students to design industry?

Design and industry are synergistic, and ideally without divide. Take, for example, Thonet's breakthrough bentwood furniture. To understand the full impact of his work beyond poetic curves and ergonomic functionality, we also can study his innovative manufacturing methodologies, which included experimentation with steam bending, wood lamination and other advances in mass production. Aalto and the Eameses' plywood experiments equally progressed reforms in serialized form-giving.

In conceiving of their designs, students will go through their own cycles of fabrication and production modeling, which may include exploring new material capacity and the unconventional use of technology and labor. Many project typologies can elicit experimental restructuring of production. Numerous Parsons faculty members have a creative practice or do research that involves rethinking industrial processes. Timo Rissanen, for instance, approaches garment cutting as an opportunity to create zero-waste manufacturing, while Daniel Michalik explores ways to machine and manipulate cork bark into products. Jonathan Pandolfi's own ceramic factory leverages slight imperfections and mismatching in his production runs as a "new rustic aesthetic." For today's design entrepreneurs, boundaries continue to blur between product and production.

Is part of your mission to address environmental or social issues through design?

These projects will expand the notion of industrial design to include a greater understanding of global supply and value chains, and intentionality toward balancing economic and social inequities. Inevitably, they'll confront questions around automation, labor and locale, and students will be challenged to make difficult design decisions. The ability to participate in environmental and social betterment through design will be central.

The program's launch will be celebrated by a panel discussion on "shortening the supply chain between design, production and consumption." Are shorter supply chains always a win for industrial designers, or are there also downsides to this trend?

Due to cheap labor and increasing globalization, much of the developed world has offshored and outsourced product development and production. This has had some positive impacts, such as cleaner cities and increased corporate wealth, but the "modernist promise" of industrial design has also created significant trade imbalances and high unemployment, as well as a loss of intellectual property and competitive know-how. Inversely, the economies in countries such as Brazil, India and China have seen unprecedented growth. However, as their manufacturing base expands, issues around sustainability, labor practices and economic equity persist.

Although industrial design practices have fostered or exacerbated these issues, our program, in alignment with the university's mission to make the world better and more just, views the field as a means to respond to these challenges and improve conditions. As we enter what has been termed the "third Industrial Revolution," the program offers students an opportunity to leapfrog and propose new ways in which both designers and users/consumers can collaborate to create better products. Shortening the supply chain between design, production and consumption is a strategy to create greater transparency during the product development cycle, as well as lower shipping distance and increase speed to market. As a tactic to create greater control and accountability in one's work, it is also a useful exercise when approaching long and complex supply chains. Choosing local may or may not mean better. Should Hazmat suits be shipped to Ebola-hit nations to ensure hygienic manufacturing and processing? Like all complex questions, this deserves multiple perspectives for a responsible conclusion. For Ebola stricken nations, fears around import/export are beginning to reshape trade paths. Everything has a context and a world of constraints.

These aren't limitations, though, or an excuse to put your creativity on hold. The challenge is figuring out the best ways to create beautifully designed products—ones that don't just look good but are good.