Penn Design

About PennDesign

The change in our name underscores our belief in the centrality of design to all aspects of creativity. A dual challenge is offered to our students: explore a broad range of possibilities through both practice and theory. Students at PennDesign seek the critical balance between art and practicality, the why and the how...the left brain and the right.

As our students and their work impact our global environment through the making of thoughtful places and objects, our new name celebrates the future of PennDesign as a leading center for design education and practice in the 21st century and beyond.


		Since the school's inception, one thing has remained constant at Penn: change and renewal.


		The need to stay vital and relevant has informed all of our choices, whether it's adding new programs such as digital media design or developing new ties to other resources at Penn, including the Wharton School.


		In fact, the tradition of working across boundaries remains the school's core strength, and our faculty continues to include some of the most influential, groundbreaking scholars and practitioners in the world.


		New ideas about buildings, landscapes, cities, or works of art emerge through engaging real projects as well as through theoretical explorations.


		Progress requires a two-way dialogue, making sense of practical experience, and using projects as the testing ground of new constructs.


		By simulating creative exploration in studio experiences, and creating opportunities for field projects by faculty and students, the School powerfully links theory and practice.


		Design - our school's common theme, focus, and mission - involves making things as well as imagining them. As essential to creativity and communication as are writing, computation, and the articulation of ideas, design is also a process.


		It is a process that is inspired by abstract theory and finds final expression in the highly technological language of computers; it is about physically wrestling tactile materials, resulting in tangible objects. Often it is a social and collaborative process, rather than the work of a single mind.


		PennDesign embraces technology as well as craft. In doing so we place equally strong emphasis on individual talent and computer-aided analysis. We balance hands-on working with materials with investigations into culture and content, media and image, narrative and object, and historical and contemporary issues of representation and design. Whether it's rooted in craft or based in technology, it has a place at PennDesign.