Design Futures Lab

The world is moving in rapid, lateral directions. From manufacturing, to economies, to information, to social engagement, we are in transition. The Design Futures Lab at CCA is looking forward, designing and testing innovating ideas and exploring both the form and the values of our future world. Design has a vital and exciting role to play in the shaping the future of our cities, our objects, and our interactions. Located in the heart of the Bay Area tech industry, and housed in the vibrant art and design community of California College of the Arts, we are in a unique position to engage both industry innovation and speculative creation.

We are makers, exploring the technology, material, and form the future will take through testing, experimenting, and prototyping. As the leading graduate design program in the Bay Area, we are in a unique position to not just engage the industries shaping the technologies and products of the future, but to shape them with more inclusive, nimble, and innovative approaches.

"The Design Futures Lab is a place to wildly and rigorously explore the future through the technologies, ecologies, and material of the present. Design is entirely driven by the future. Our values and desires for tomorrow are embedded in the objects and qualities of what we design today. Our ability to achieve a more inclusive, resilient future requires first our imagination to envision it." Sara Dean, Director