Set Design

Set design is the design of the physical world in which a play, opera, film or live event takes place: the stage, the scenery, the furniture and props, and the way all of them change during a performance. In theatre it is also called scenic design or scenography, and in film and television the same work is usually called production design.

What is set design?

In theatre, a "set" is everything built or placed on stage to tell the audience where and when the action happens and how it should feel. The reference entry on scenic design defines the field as the creation of scenery for theatrical productions, and notes that in film and television the role is called production design. A set designer works with the director, the lighting and costume designers and the technical team, and has to balance three demands at once: the story, the actors' movement and what the stage, budget and crew can physically handle.

So the meaning of set design goes beyond decoration. A set organises space and time. It decides where entrances are, how far apart two characters stand, what the audience sees first and how a scene change happens in eight seconds rather than eighty. That is why the discipline sits so close to architecture and interior design, and why many set designers train as architects.

"A set designer is responsible for creating a world for stories to exist on stage."

Debbie Duru, set designer, speaking to the Young V&A (2022)

Set design overlaps with scenography, a broader term that usually covers the whole visual and spatial composition of a performance, including light, sound and costume, and with exhibition design, which uses the same tools to stage objects rather than actors.

A short history of set design

The history of scenic design is usually traced back to the outdoor amphitheatres of ancient Greece. The next big shift came in the Renaissance, when painters and architects learned to draw convincing perspective and brought the illusion of depth onto the stage.

The finest surviving example is the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, built between 1580 and 1585 to Andrea Palladio's final design. After Palladio's death, Vincenzo Scamozzi added trompe-l'oeil streets of ancient Thebes that seem to recede to a distant horizon. That scenery is the oldest surviving stage set still in existence, and the theatre has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.

For centuries afterwards much scenery was painted: flat canvas wings and backdrops that slid on and off to change the location. In the nineteenth century, realist drama needed real rooms, and the box set appeared: three solid walls with the proscenium opening acting as an invisible fourth wall. Its introduction is traditionally credited to the actress and manager Elizabeth Vestris, and it became central to realist plays such as Ibsen's A Doll's House and Chekhov's The Seagull.

Around 1900 two European pioneers, Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, changed the direction of stage design. Their drawings replaced painted detail with simple masses, steps and light, and their ideas fed the New Stagecraft movement in early twentieth-century America.

In the twentieth century the Czech designer Josef Svoboda, who saw himself as a scenographer rather than a designer, combined live actors with filmed projections in the Laterna Magika productions for Expo 58 in Brussels, opening the way to the projection and video sets common today.

Types of set design in theatre

There is no official list, but designers and teachers tend to group sets by how they handle place and change. These are the types you will meet most often.

Box set

A realistic room with three walls and practical doors and windows, seen through the missing fourth wall. It suits domestic drama and television sitcoms, where the whole story happens in one or two rooms.

Unit set

A single architectural structure, often of stairs, platforms and openings, that stays on stage all night and becomes different places through small changes of furniture, light and use. It is efficient for plays with many short scenes.

Multiple and wagon sets

Several complete settings built on rolling platforms (wagons), turntables (revolves) or flown pieces, so whole scenes can move in and out quickly. Musicals and opera rely on them.

Permanent set

A fixed architectural setting that does not change during the production, or even between productions, as at the Teatro Olimpico. Open-air and festival stages often work this way.

Minimal or abstract set

A few elements, or an almost empty stage, that suggest rather than describe. A well-known example is Ralph Koltai's set model for As You Like It (National Theatre Company at the Old Vic, 1967), built of perspex, acetate, paint, plastic and wood, which implied the location instead of recreating it realistically. The V&A's gallery label sums up the approach.

"A theatrical reality can be created with symbols and abstract forms."

V&A gallery label for Ralph Koltai's As You Like It set model (1967)

Projection and digital sets

Projected images, LED walls and video replace or overlay built scenery, so a location can change instantly. This is the lineage of Svoboda's experiments, and it now meets virtual and augmented reality.

The set design process

Most productions follow the same sequence, even if the time available ranges from weeks to years.

1. Script analysis. Reading the text for every location, entrance, prop and change of mood, and agreeing a concept with the director.
2. Research. Collecting images of period, place, materials and atmosphere.
3. Sketches. Quick drawings and thumbnails to test ideas.
4. Model box. A scale model of the stage. Designers often make several models and renderings before the final drawings.
5. Technical drawings. Floor plans, a composite plan of moving pieces and front elevations that the technical director, scenic artists and prop makers build from, now often produced from a 3D CAD model.
6. Build and technical rehearsal. Workshops build and paint the set, and the designer adjusts it on stage with light and actors.

The model is where most decisions are actually made. Director, actors, lighting designer and workshop can all look at the same miniature stage, test sightlines and scene changes, and agree on what will be built before any money is spent on full-size scenery.

Set design on uni.xyz

Set design on uni.xyz is a small but specific body of work. Members come at it from architecture, so their sets tend to be built objects that move through the city rather than painted rooms behind a proscenium.

The One with Sheldon by ChiCheng Vong, a winning entry in The one with Sheldon competition, reimagines the Friends apartment when Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory moves in with Monica and Rachel. It is a neat exercise in set design for television: the room has to describe three characters before anyone speaks. Aishwarya Subramanian's version, an Editor's Choice entry in the same competition, uses the set to show the quirks the two roommates share and do not.

The Madrid Art Bioscope competition produced a cluster of mobile stages for street performers. Blank Canvas by Anthony Ramirez, which won a People's Choice Award there, drapes a canvas across the street that recalls a red carpet, a theatre curtain and a cinema screen. A cart with extendable rails and a pulley lets it shift from a horizontal stage to an upright surface, and the design stays deliberately minimal so the symbol does the work.

Ringsail by Yannet Mercado is a portable theatre whose ring-shaped sail rotates behind the performers, so the backdrop changes as audiences gather on every side. Caja de Maravillas by Angela Uribe and Alexis Escobar folds into a compact box for transport and opens into a stage, while Azure Wave by Tobias Maiden is a system of modular platforms that can be set at different configurations and angles.

Our feature on Ascension Scope reads Naomi Molina's stair modules as part bleacher, part podium: there is no fixed front or back, so audience and performers can swap places. The Interfusion by Ömer Seçim and Barkin Karabas, entered in the Opera Truck competition, sets out to fuse the street with art and to develop the relationship between art and its observer.

The richest essay on the topic is Serra Katırcıoğlu's Spatial Fiction and the Gazing Eye, which argues that cinema and architecture share one aim, drawing on Juhani Pallasmaa's idea of "lived spaces", and that the architect is now a director of atmosphere.

"The architect is, in fact, a secret screenwriter who choreographs the daily life of users, directing human movement through voids and masses."

Serra Katırcıoğlu, Spatial Fiction and the Gazing Eye

Challenges and future directions

Sets are temporary by nature, and that is their biggest problem. A production can need tonnes of timber, steel and paint for a run of a few weeks, and much of it is skipped afterwards. Theatres are responding with stock scenery reused across shows, modular systems, recyclable materials and designs planned for disassembly from the first sketch.

Technology is the second pressure. LED walls, projection mapping and real-time game engines let a set change as fast as a camera cut, and film studios now shoot actors in front of digital backgrounds instead of built locations. The craft question is how to keep the physical, touchable quality that makes live performance different from a screen.

FDA2044 by Jelena Lekovic, entered in the Bauhaus Neue competition, imagines a new school attached to the Faculty of Drama Arts at the University of Belgrade, built around VR and AR technology in scenography: a sign that training is changing as fast as the stage.

Set design for students and designers

Architecture students make strong set designers because they already think in plan, section and sequence. A good thesis angle treats the set as architecture with a script: a mobile stage that turns a plaza into a theatre, a reusable unit set for a touring company, a sitcom room designed from the characters outward, or a hybrid of built scenery and projection. Build a model early and photograph it at eye level, the way the audience will see it. Related topics on uni.xyz include performing arts, lighting design and open-air theatre, and you can find live briefs on our design competitions page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the meaning of set design?

Set design means designing the physical environment of a performance or film: the stage, scenery, furniture and props, and how they change from scene to scene. In film and television it is usually called production design.

What is a set in theatre?

A set is everything built or placed on the stage to show where and when the action happens, from walls, platforms and backdrops to doors, stairs and furniture. It also shapes how actors move and how scenes change.

What are the types of set design in theatre?

The common types are the box set, the unit set, multiple or wagon sets, the permanent set, the minimal or abstract set and projection or digital sets. Many productions combine two or more.

What does a set designer do?

A set designer reads the script, agrees a concept with the director, researches, sketches, builds a scale model and produces technical drawings for the workshop, then refines the set during technical rehearsals.

Is set design the same as scenography?

They overlap. Set design usually means the scenery itself, while scenography often covers the whole visual and spatial composition of a show, including light, sound and costume.

References and further reading

• Scenic design, Wikipedia
• Teatro Olimpico, Wikipedia
• Box set (theatre), Wikipedia
• Josef Svoboda, Wikipedia
• Express yourself through set-design, Young V&A
• Set model for As You Like It, Ralph Koltai (1967), Victoria and Albert Museum