Doing Good | Bezalel-led Emergency Initiatives
עושים/ות משהו טוב | יוזמות בשעת חירום
أعمال خيرية | مبادرات طلابية من بتسلئيل للمساعدة في وضع الطوارئ
Industrial Design (B.Des)
Department of Industrial Design
המחלקה לעיצוב תעשייתי
قسم التصميم الصناعي
![ספי חפץ](/sites/default/files/2020-08/BEZALEL%20PORTRAITS-2154-Edit.jpg)
Registration for the undergraduate programs at Bezalel Academy is open. For information and registration
Bezalel’s Department of Industrial Design provides its students with the tools, processes and skill-set needed to develop thoughtful, responsible, human-centered design solutions and responses to an extensive variety of problems and the constant changes and global challenges that affect all aspects of our lives. Since its establishment over 35 years ago, the Department, the first of its kind in Israel, has guided generations of young designers in this multifaceted process, stressing the important role they play in making our lives and the world a better place.
Throughout their studies students are taught the design process and are trained to design with intention, considering purpose and function, the individual and the community. They learn to incorporate economic, cultural and social values into their designs and strive to marry them harmoniously in both urban and natural surroundings - whether they are designing everyday products, services, systems and processes or developing comprehensive strategies, targeted responses or pioneering innovations.
In our ever-changing complex world, the abilities students gain at the Academy are crucial to the time and global space in which we live. They learn to be both strategic and holistic in their approach, to be flexible yet able to develop well-conceived and executed designs, to think creatively and critically and recognize what is important. They study how to use technological advancements to peoples’ benefit and to lead, understand and interact with teams from different fields. They are taught to produce significant new value.
The interdisciplinary curriculum is all encompassing – it delves into the semiotics of form and function, color and esthetics, traditional crafts and digital technologies, deals with issues of commerce, accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, environmental considerations, and trains students to become adept in the language of science, logic, artificial intelligence and data. All these help and complement students in acquiring the main tool of the industrial designer “design thinking” – a sharpened skillset capable of being adapted to any topic in any field.
By the time they graduate, students have become proficient in anthropological qualitative research, identifying a problem and defining human needs and motivations. They know how to experiment, formulate conclusions and responses and an orderly plan of action – to push boundaries impelled by a burning desire to act and create.
Bezalel’s Department of Industrial Design is home to a community that continues to grow, adapt and develop extensive knowledge in the ever-changing requirements of the field. This community designs for good – responding, improving, innovating, advancing and helping find new ways to thrive in the world we live in.
![ספי חפץ](/sites/default/files/2020-08/BEZALEL%20PORTRAITS-2154-Edit.jpg)
Industrial Design (M.Des)
Master's Program in Industrial Design (M.Des.)
התכנית לתואר שני בעיצוב תעשייתי
برنامج اللقب الثاني في التصميم الصناعي
![רומי מיקולינסקי](/sites/default/files/2020-08/_MG_1259-Edit.jpg)
Registration for the Graduate programs is closing >> 26.7
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The Master's Degree program in Industrial Design at Bezalel is a bi-annual program which prepares exceptional designers and creators for leadership roles in the changing world. There are three tracks in the program: Design and innovation, about design and design and technology, in which students are provided with tools, knowledge and a creative educational framework.
The program is based on the assumption that designers are change agents who develop interdisciplinary connections, look at problems in a creative manner and offer original steps to solving them. To that end, the program creates opportunities to experience practical work in a variety of fields: in high-tech and industry, in the world of curatorship and art, in the world of academia and research, in the third sector and local authorities – as well as in the frame of international collaborations.
The program exposes students to deeper meanings of central processes which currently take place in the world, and enables them to translate processes of innovation and design thinking into a distinct personal language, while integrating in new product development and new services – all in a competitive and dynamic world. During studies, the program develops the ability to integrate into multidisciplinary teams and development process, to integrate systemic vision and to solidify a critical approach. In addition, the students acquire tools for acting in a global environment, for establishing connections with stakeholders and to balance between the different needs. These skills constitute central milestones in the ability of these designers to integrate and succeed in the job market and in the Israeli and global discourse.
The graduates of the program integrate in the forefront of industry and the design fields as product managers in high-tech and start-ups, as UI/UX designers in global companies such as Microsoft, Intel and more, as managers of innovation teams in local authorities and the Air Force, as directors of innovation laboratories at the Weizmann Institute and the ORT chain, as lecturers in design academies, as curators and entrepreneurs.
The program's lecturers are leading designers, artists and curators, marketing people and researchers with extensive knowledge in the fields of strategy management, product management and design, service management, interaction and game management, programming, storytelling, critical thinking, curatorship and writing.
The program has three tracks – which constitute three major fields of knowledge in the field of contemporary design:
Design and Innovation Management,
About Design, and Design and Technology.
![רומי מיקולינסקי](/sites/default/files/2020-08/_MG_1259-Edit.jpg)
Research & Innovation Authority - about
Research & Innovation Authority
רשות המחקר והחדשנות
مكتب الأبحاث والابتكار
![טל חסדאי-ריפא](/sites/default/files/2022-09/x_MG_2094-Edit,P20copy.jpg.pagespeed.ic.HOwGyqCz7v.jpg)
Research & Innovation
Viewed through the critical lens of artists and designers, research at Bezalel is both humanistic and human-centered. It seeks to meet people where they are but also surprises, provokes, informs and inspires unconventional thinking.
Bezalel is spearheading the exploration and development of this promising field. With a fundamental openness to the unknown and the unexpected, it applies singular strategies to the investigation of a wide range of challenging problems encompassing the scientific, intellectual and social. This enables the Academy to produce innovative, useful and groundbreaking results while remaining both scholarly and imaginative.
Bezalel researchers partner with colleagues from all disciplines of inquiry using pioneering methods and tools, fueling activity that inquires, invents, frames, combines, involves and critiques in novel ways. The research and development is about, for or through art and design. It examines practical problems and theories as well as complex issues confronting humanity to provide greater insight and new approaches. It focuses on investigating significant aspects of life that influence both the individual and society, alongside the latest artistic techniques and disciplines.
Along with other areas, research at Bezalel aims to discover and adopt new materials, new technologies or new uses for them – it emphasizes new cultural ideas, from human rights or the Holocaust to issues related to social aspects of technology like human-robot interactions or new political opportunities enabled by digital diplomacy; it examines challenges presented by medical processes and accessibility as well as the global challenges of climate change. Research at Bezalel is deeply involved in the structure of smart cities and autonomous driving; it investigates and advances designed-based exploration of wide academic domains ranging from distance learning and mass communication to heritage preservation and disaster planning. Research at Bezalel is all encompassing, touching on all facets of our lives.
Bezalel guides its researchers to develop theories that inform practice and employ practices that inform theory, while understanding that in art, design and architecture, a fundamental separation between the two does not necessarily exist; that its inherent outlook is entrepreneurial and future-oriented.
The Academy’s innate strength is its ability to constantly imagine and re-imagine a better world and quickly translate these thoughts and theories into useful and practical applications and enterprises. In an ever-shifting social, technological, material and political environment, Bezalel’s investment in art and design research helps reveal new knowledge; new knowledge that leads to novel and inventive understandings of the world.
![טל חסדאי-ריפא](/sites/default/files/2022-09/x_MG_2094-Edit,P20copy.jpg.pagespeed.ic.HOwGyqCz7v.jpg)
Sustainable Development Hub
Bezalel’s Sustainable Development Hub
המרחב לפיתוח מקיים
مركز التنمية المستدامة
Sustainable development stands today at the forefront of the national and global agenda with the United Nations, the European Union, governments, universities, civil societies and business organizations leading the efforts.
This agenda prescribes that sustainability requires simultaneously integrating the need for continuous human and economic development with the need to preserve the opportunity for future generations to continue to develop. Since Bezalel trains the designers, artists and architects who will map out culture and be responsible for the products and structures which will characterize Israeli society, a great deal of responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Academy in respect of the next generations.
Bezalel’s Sustainable Development Hub systematically acts to instill the understanding of this responsibility and helps develop the professional tools and capabilities required to meet this responsibility and affect sustainable change. In its activities, the Sustainable Development Hub encourages students to take on a leadership role by identifying complex universal challenges, asking questions, taking on critical standpoints and implementing solutions that take into consideration social, communal and environmental perspectives.
The essence of Bezalel is comprised from a unique professional identity, a distinctive vocabulary, and singular creative processes. Bezalel’s Sustainable Development Hub leads the efforts for the integration of sustainability at the Academy through the development of an academic infrastructure for teaching and research of sustainable development. The Hub adds to the professional basket of tools available, abilities and capabilities to better cope with the complexities and scale of sustainable development challenges. Among these special capabilities are systemic thinking, strategic thinking and the interpersonal skills required for research and creation in a multidisciplinary team all the while taking into account ecologic points of view as well as instilling into the creative process the needs of future generations and society as a whole.
The activities of the Hub give centrality and importance to sustainable development at Bezalel through individual and group research studies, academic publications, conferences and seminars. It also spearheads collaborations with academic, civilian and business entities, on a municipal, national, regional and global level.
Head of Bezalel’s Sustainable Development Hub – Dr. Elad Persov.
elad.persov@post.bezalel.ac.il
אדריכלות נוף - תואר ראשון
The Undergraduate Program in Landscape Architecture
תואר ראשון באדריכלות נוף
برنامج اللقب الأول في هندسة المناظر الطبيعية
![אליסה רוזנברג](/sites/default/files/2024-01/xBEZALEL,P20PORTRAITS,P20,PD7,P90,PD7,P9C,PD7,P99,PD7,PA1,PD7,P94,P20,PD7,PA8,PD7,P95,PD7,P96,PD7,PA0,PD7,P91,PD7,PA8,PD7,P92,P20,PD7,PA6,PD7,P91,PD7,PA2,PD7,P95,PD7,PA0,PD7,P99.jpg.pagespeed.ic.-1DtumnKsY.jpg)
With the current climate crisis, growing population density and the rising threat to our natural resources, the profession of landscape architecture is becoming ever more important in Israel and the world.
Landscape architecture deals with the planning and design of natural systems as lived environments; it integrates cultural, social, and ecological perspectives at varying scales, from public and open space systems to urban and regional design, infrastructure planning, the design of neighborhoods, and public institutions. Issues such as global warming, landscape restoration, urban forestry, storm water management, flood prevention and preservation of biological diversity have become central to the work of landscape architects and are redefining the profession.
The profession is recognized by the Registrar of Engineers and Architects in Israel.
The Undergraduate Degree Program in Landscape Architecture* is a joint program of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and the Hebrew University. It is the only program of its kind in Israel, combining landscape. Architecture, taught at the Bezalel School of Architecture, with an in-depth study of plant sciences, ecology and environment at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University.
Through this unique collaboration, our goal is to train the next generation of designers with expertise in the fields of ecology and the environment. The joint program of Bezalel and the Hebrew University will provide students with a toolkit of design and planning skills based on ecology and natural systems. This comprehensive curriculum will prepare our graduates to deal with the increasing complexity of open space planning in the Israeli and global environment.
* The degree will be awarded conditional upon the approval of the Council for Higher Education (as is standard in new programs in the certification process).
** The opening of the program is conditional upon a minimum number of registrants.
![אליסה רוזנברג](/sites/default/files/2024-01/xBEZALEL,P20PORTRAITS,P20,PD7,P90,PD7,P9C,PD7,P99,PD7,PA1,PD7,P94,P20,PD7,PA8,PD7,P95,PD7,P96,PD7,PA0,PD7,P91,PD7,PA8,PD7,P92,P20,PD7,PA6,PD7,P91,PD7,PA2,PD7,P95,PD7,PA0,PD7,P99.jpg.pagespeed.ic.-1DtumnKsY.jpg)
Photography (B.F.A)
Department of Photography
המחלקה לצילום
قسم التصوير
![דוד עדיקא](/sites/default/files/2020-08/DAVID_ADIKA_BEZALEL%20PORTRAITS-3306-2.jpg)
Registration for the undergraduate programs at Bezalel Academy. For information and registration >>
The Department offers its students full academic freedom to explore possible directions for activity, thought and creation – to refine their ability to think critically and observe analytically. The rich spectrum of courses encourages them to develop knowledge of work methods that help them gain technical skills and the opportunity to study both theoretical and practical concepts.
To help understand photography’s global rebirth and the unusual magnitude of its growth and development, the curriculum integrates theoretical, historical and conceptual studies with hands-on technological practice covering a broad range of visual practices. Since photography is also defined by its cultural framework, the program also includes courses on the complex social and political environment of the Middle East.
In the last five decades, Bezalel’s Department of Photography has become recognized as the most prominent and prestigious photography department in the region. Its outstanding academic and professional training, combined with its geopolitical location in Jerusalem and the fact it is an integral part of Israel’s leading arts and design institute, have positioned it as a significant and influential component of the local and international photography world.
![דוד עדיקא](/sites/default/files/2020-08/DAVID_ADIKA_BEZALEL%20PORTRAITS-3306-2.jpg)
Ceramics and Glass Design (B.F.A)
Department of Ceramics and Glass Design
המחלקה לעיצוב קרמי וזכוכית
قسم تصميم الخزف والزجاج
![יעל עצמוני](/sites/default/files/2021-10/xyaelAzmoni.jpg.pagespeed.ic.uMDjXcRkqg.jpg)
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The Department of Ceramics and Glass Design is the only academic degree program of its kind in Israel and the Academy’s only program that focuses on the essential understanding the primary materials involved – ceramics and glass. Combining craft and art, students are taught the secrets of ancient materials and given the resources to find ground-breaking new directions for their chosen mediums. Using their acquired knowledge and skills, students can expand their craft to embrace new media, tools and contemporary viewpoints – infusing the visual legacies of Israel’s diverse communities into the future of artistic culture. With this approach, the Department empowers and energizes the students to explore, discover and think out-of-the-box, giving them the freedom and space to realize and pursue what speaks to them personally.
In the world of art and design, professionals need to be recognized as unique – so the Department of Ceramics and Glass Design provides a unique curriculum for each student. Together they learn to marry multiple disciplines, technologies, values and visual culture; individually, they learn to express their singular conclusions through the language of their craft, graduating with superior skills, self-awareness and the ability to present their work to the world.
The Department deals with all design aspects related to today’s most topical and timely issues: from the connection between material activity and digital media through questions about sustainability and ecology to discussions about social and ethical values.
We believe our students come to Bezalel to acquire more than an outstanding professional education but rather to become active partners in developing an ethos of quality, accuracy, commitment and enthusiasm that will change the face of Israeli society. It is precisely the craft tradition (art) that offers a critical starting point and an alternative and value-laden response to the adversities and despair of 21st century society.
The Department is home to those who dream that change can take place and they can help make that happen.
![יעל עצמוני](/sites/default/files/2021-10/xyaelAzmoni.jpg.pagespeed.ic.uMDjXcRkqg.jpg)
Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Master's Program in Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
התכנית לתואר שני באמנויות
برنامج اللقب الثاني في الفنون
![Dor Guez - Photo by Barak Rubin](/sites/default/files/2021-03/xDG,P20-,P20Barak,P20Rubin.jpg.pagespeed.ic.DO9wAfALo6.jpg)
Registration for the Graduate programs is closing >> 26.7
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Bezalel’s Master’s Program in Fine Arts (M.F.A.) is the Academy’s oldest and most sought-after master’s degree. As the only studio-based program in the region, acceptance is highly competitive. The program acts as an incubator, offering promising emerging artists a unique opportunity to refine their talents as they strive to create an original, focused and experimental body of work.
Bezalel’s M.F.A. stresses that artists do not operate in a vacuum – rather that art is forever informed by the intellectual, moral and cultural climate of the time and place where it is created. This is compounded by the distinctive location in which the program operates reinforces this important viewpoint and the program’s identity. Theory studies and workshops take place on Bezalel’s main campus in Jerusalem, while the individual studio spaces are located in a former textile factory in southern Tel Aviv. This area is a melting pot of immigrants and locals, culturally and economically varied; a semi-industrial neighborhood set amidst centuries-old Jewish, Muslim and Christian sites.
Alongside the local context, the program highlights the global reality and framework in which the young artists operate, offering them a wide spectrum of international collaborations with peer programs, lecturers and leading artists. Throughout their time at the Academy, students are mentored by the program’s multicultural faculty along with local and international artists, while sharing their distinct perspectives within the diverse student body. These meaningful and fruitful encounters often result in innovative and insightful professional cooperation and partnerships – partnerships that continue well past graduation.
The program offers students full academic freedom along with exposure to a wide range of conceptual and artistic perspectives, to help them sharpen their critical point of view and comparative analytic skills. At the same time, the MFA presents its students with the practical skills they will need to pave their way in the art world and beyond it, as dynamic and relevant artists and as socially, politically engaged and active citizens of the world.
![Dor Guez - Photo by Barak Rubin](/sites/default/files/2021-03/xDG,P20-,P20Barak,P20Rubin.jpg.pagespeed.ic.DO9wAfALo6.jpg)
Dr. Noam Gal - things that are not done with words
Chus Martinez - Club Univers : Towards a New Language to Name Our Problems
Urban Design (M.Urb.Des)
Master's Program in Urban Design (M.Urb.Des.)
התכנית לתואר שני בעיצוב אורבני
برنامج اللقب الثاني في التصميم الحضري
![דניאלה פוסק](/sites/default/files/2024-01/xBEZALEL,P20PORTRAITS,P20,PD7,P93,PD7,PA0,PD7,P99,PD7,P90,PD7,P9C,PD7,P94,P20,PD7,PA4,PD7,P95,PD7,PA1,PD7,PA7.jpg.pagespeed.ic.nukQGb7x4P.jpg)
Registration for the Graduate programs is closing >> 26.7
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Urban Design encompasses far more than the layout of houses, roads and public buildings; it examines cities’ social fabric and their relation to the urban landscape. Along with understanding the architecture and infrastructure of the city, urban designers learn to recognize the cultural, social, historical and economic factors at play.
The program’s curriculum gives students the ability to integrate theoretical and analytical discourse into their planning and design thinking. Its courses address contemporary issues of public concern through multidisciplinary research and practice with faculty from a wide range of disciplines. The program also examines political, social and economic issues that stem from adding new urban layers onto existing cities alongside conditions of urbanization in peripheral areas. Students learn how to challenge conventional social and political thinking involving land use resources and the preservation of those resources from the perspective of sustainable development.
The program asserts that any creative activity in the context of one area of study serves as a source of inspiration for another. Often in collaboration with relevant stakeholders and communities, students in the ‘urban lab’ analyze and address case studies of complex urban environments, which then become relevant to other similar environments.
Located in Jerusalem – a city that is at the same time unified, divided, fragmented, contested, mixed and both post- and neo-colonial – the program provides a platform to explore the intersections of various urban processes in time and space, and through their study, equips students with a sound basis in critical urban theory, geography and urban design strategies and tactics.
Graduates of Bezalel’s urban design program are dedicated to enriching peoples’ quality of life through innovative, knowledge-based design – inspiring, illustrating and investigating how a place can best serve its inhabitants and passers-by. Equipped with skills and training, education and experience, they work to promote new approaches and influence the discipline both locally and globally.
![דניאלה פוסק](/sites/default/files/2024-01/xBEZALEL,P20PORTRAITS,P20,PD7,P93,PD7,PA0,PD7,P99,PD7,P90,PD7,P9C,PD7,P94,P20,PD7,PA4,PD7,P95,PD7,PA1,PD7,PA7.jpg.pagespeed.ic.nukQGb7x4P.jpg)
Visual and Material Culture (B.A.)
Department of Visual and Material Culture
המחלקה לתרבות חזותית וחומרית
قسم الثقافة المرئية والمادية
![ד׳׳ר גל הרץ](/sites/default/files/2022-11/x_1344149-Edit.jpg.pagespeed.ic.bgJX8OIYnZ.jpg)
Registration for the Undergraduate programs at Bezalel Academy. For information and registration
We live in a world where networks and new forms of communication capture our gaze, algorithms calculate awareness and the user experience. Is this reality or an illusion? These boundaries are becoming more and more blurred, and even love has become an app.
The Department of Visual and Material Culture is the only program in Israel that offers a theoretical degree in a creative environment. The program of study is three years long and deals with the theoretical and research dimensions of the fields of visual and material culture. As part of their studies, students will develop the ability to observe, examine, and think about everyday questions in a new, creative, and boundary-breaking way, will actually experience working with ideas, and will study theoretical as well as practical courses in the various Bezalel departments, with a unique connection between theory and practice.
As part of their studies, students will meet researchers, as well as creators and artists, will be part of a creative community, and will experience academic learning different from that found anywhere else: personal, touching, empowering, and mind-expanding - workshops, reading groups and personal guidance in projects, student exchanges abroad and connections with leading cultural and research institutions in Israel and around the world.
The faculty and lecturers in the department come from the fields of history, critical theory and philosophy of art as well as from the practical fields of art, architecture, and design. At the new Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Bezalel campus in the center of Jerusalem, diverse learning spaces are open to students, where they will be active partners in thought and creative action from the very beginning.
![ד׳׳ר גל הרץ](/sites/default/files/2022-11/x_1344149-Edit.jpg.pagespeed.ic.bgJX8OIYnZ.jpg)
Pagination