The Royal College of Art in London has announced plans to expand its science and technology programme, and revealed that student applications from within the European Union have risen in the past year.
The leading art and design school plans to add courses focused on topics like nano-robotics and machine-learning to its offering, as well as embedding scientific collaboration into its existing postgraduate programmes.
This forms part of Generation RCA, a five-year programme announced yesterday by the college's vice-chancellor Paul Thompson, which will also see the college overhaul its teaching facilities and introduce new scholarship programmes.
At the same time, the school revealed that applications from the EU are up 12 per cent, despite the imminent prospect of Brexit. Embedding scientific disciplines in core subjects
The RCA's stated aim is to "transform the accepted paradigm of an art and design university".
It plans to "reverse the current orthodoxies" by placing artists and designers alongside scientists and engineers at the outset of their research rather than as an afterthought.
To do so, the college will strengthen ties with Imperial College and other London institutions offering science and engineering courses.
It also introduce new courses centred on "nano and soft robotics, computer science and machine learning, materials science and the circular economy".
"This is a move away from the paradigm of the 20th-century art sc...