Te Ara Ākonga
The Student Pathway
Waihorotiu, in all its dimensions, serves as the central metaphor for learning at AUT’s School of Art
and Design. Its journey – shaped by the restless movement of water and revealed through the guiding
presence of light – defines and sustains the School’s evolving identity: visually, spatially, intellectually,
culturally, and philosophically.
The interplay of water and light permeates every aspect of the ākonga experience, shaping the
journeys of learners from both Aotearoa and around the world. From the tangible to the conceptual,
these complementary forces guide an ongoing process of inquiry, creation, and critical engagement.
The awa symbolises the journey into the unknown: descending into darkness, navigating complexity
and uncertainty, seeking knowledge, and emerging transformed. Like the river, learners encounter
challenges, adapt to shifting conditions, and reconnect fragmented pathways. This journey is cyclical,
flowing through exploration, confrontation, reflection, and renewal. Light, as an ever-present guide,
illuminates understanding and renders the unseen visible.
The School of Art and Design draws upon the deep whakapapa of this place. Beneath the surface –
where histories and contemporary practice intersect – the essential forces of life, creativity, and
knowledge are woven together. The School stands as both vessel and riverbed: a site of
convergence, movement, and continual regeneration. Learners contribute to and are shaped by this
dynamic environment, advancing global perspectives while remaining grounded in the responsibilities
of place.
Waihorotiu reminds us that learning is never static. Understanding does not emerge from fixed
positions, but through sustained movement between the known and unknown, the visible and the
concealed. Light offers clarity in moments of emergence and the capacity for reflection in times of
uncertainty.
The journey of each learner reflects the journey of Waihorotiu itself: emerging from darkness into light;
navigating the tensions of containment and release; and ultimately returning, enriched, to contribute
meaningfully to their communities and disciplines.
Communication Design
Communication Design can provoke a change in understanding, challenge behaviours or tell a story by sharing and communicating messages. Student work represents historical and modern concepts of visual language and design. Conversations that represent the power of language that ultimately impact our everyday lives.
AVG - Animation, Visual Effects and Game Design
Digital designers tell stories through animation, visual effects, and game design. Our students are in high demand for moving images, interactive and immersive fields, animation, motion capture and visual effects, gaming, cinematic production, and augmented and virtual reality. Work featured evidences our students’ creativity, communication and storytelling, in compelling and engaging ways
Fashion Design
Fashion Design focuses on conceptualising and developing innovative products. Fashion marks time. It inspires change and responds to the cultural and political issues that underpin society. Our students evidence critical understanding and work that looks to the future of fashion and its ability to record histories.
Industrial Design
Industrial design is an exciting and rapidly evolving profession, and our graduates are award-winning and well-prepared for a changing future. Students work with tangible, three-dimensional manufactured objects like consumer products, furniture, packaging, medical and sports equipment, as well as systems, services and interfaces. Many products are the solutions to real-life problems where ethical, environmental and social responsibility underpin all aspects at the core of their practice.
Interaction Design
Interaction Design focuses on digital interfaces, as well as physical artefacts, including digital web platforms (desktop, mobile and other devices), apps, way-finding and navigation systems, as well as wearable technologies and augmented visual spaces and product interfaces. Our student's evidence work that weave connections for a range of contemporary and future-orientated contexts, technologies and platforms.
Spatial and Interior Design
Spatial Design is a contemporary multidisciplinary programme that explores space through interior and architectural design, exhibition, event and performance design, visualisation and virtual environments. Spatial designers are experts at finding their way into new situations by interpreting and analysing them spatially, experientially, and culturally. They reinvent, reconfigure, redesign, and renovate places, working with (and questioning) what exists.
Visual Arts
Our graduating visual artists understand the trends and concepts driving contemporary art, the importance of mātauranga Māori, and how to work collaboratively to produce objects, craft, images, taonga and artefacts. They create works that generate new ideas and invent new modes of expression. They are critical, ethical and creative visual artist practitioners.
Postgraduate Studies
Our postgraduates are ethically, culturally and environmentally aware. Their journey from undergraduate to postgraduate is told here, where the navigating space of the weave offers room for new discoveries and knowledge.
Thank you to
