From 3D printing to digital manufacturing, design and technology are converging and elevating each other in new ways. Advances in design technologies carry the potential to open new possibilities in how we develop everything from nanoscale biology to exploration beyond our planet.
To foster the next generation of designers in the technological world, Cornell University’s multi-college Department of Design Tech, chaired by architect and designer Jenny Sabin, is exploring the most effective ways to design and apply emerging technologies that answer the greatest needs and challenges of both today and the future.
We spoke with Sabin to learn about what drove her to co-develop Design Tech, the unique interdisciplinary approach of the Department, how its collaboration with Cornell Tech promotes design entrepreneurship, and how the work of Design Tech students will shape the future of the things we are able to create and issues we are able to address.
Can you give us an overview of what the Design Tech Department is?
The Department of Design Tech at Cornell University is a transdisciplinary and multi-college endeavor, led and administered by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in partnership with the College of Human Ecology (CHE), Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Cornell Engineering, and Cornell Tech in New York City.
At Design Tech, we work at the forefront of Design education and transform and reimagine traditional methods, especially as they can be connected to emerging technologies and new ways to see and experience the world. For example, we ask what the role of design is in the context of generative AI and work toward developing cutting edge answers through generative approaches, digital and robotic fabrication, and emerging technologies across disciplines including design arts, design science, design engineering and design professions.
By integrating and enhancing design and technology departments and disciplines across the university, we are training broader cross disciplinary leaders that engage and develop hybrid, creative, and synthetic thinking and design.
What is your work and background and how did it contribute to the development and formation of Design Tech?
For the past 20 years I’ve been innovating and developing a new model for teaching and conducting research across disciplinary boundaries. This started with my formation of the Sabin and Jones LabStudioin 2006 at the University of Pennsylvania with my long-time collaborator, molecular biologist Peter Lloyd Jones, before I started at Cornell in 2011. This provided a transdisciplinary foundation at the intersection of science, technology, and design that continues to thrive in the context of my lab, JSLab, at Cornell.
In the JSLab we specialize in computational design, data visualization and digital fabrication, where we investigate the intersections of architecture and science and apply insights and theories from biology, robotics, computer science, mathematics, materials science, fiber science and beyond. We use our study of these intersections to design for critical topics such as sustainability through work that is bottom-up, generative and informed by biology as a way of thinking, programming materials, and collaborating with working living systems. An example of a question we pose is, how might buildings behave like organisms responding and adapting to their local contexts?
In addition to the JSLabat Cornell, I also run an experimental architecture practice called Jenny Sabin Studio where we apply fundamental research and innovative approaches to responsive and adaptive architecture in urban settings. So Design Tech’s generative and transdisciplinary design pedagogy is one that I’ve been pioneering and leading together with my collaborators for 20 years.
Why was Design Tech created and where did you see a need for the Department?
The challenges of our time demand that design and technology compound on top of each other to cultivate new collaborative models and applications to comprehend key social, environmental and technological issues.
It’s likely we are in the midst of what some call the fourth industrial revolution, a paradigm shift that some historians are saying is the biggest to impact design since the medieval period. We can see these new intersections between the physical, the digital, and the biological in examples from designing and engineering 3D printed body parts to reducing carbon emissions in construction. They are radically altering the world from the nano to the macro scales.
Adjacent to this paradigm shift, technology development is gaining research prominence with the NSF launching the Technology, Innovations and Partnerships directorate in 2019. With the federal government prioritizing and committing to technology application, design has gained a new value, and there is more of an appetite and ability to explore the intersection between design and technology through sponsored research.
What does the educational process look like for students in the M.S. in Design Technology?
The core curriculum of our M.S. in Design Technology includes a suite of courses and studios that take place over the course of two years. All of the students spend their first year in Ithaca. They take Design and Making Across Disciplines, Design for Physical Interaction, and Coding for Design, as well as electives in support of their unique interests.
In the second year students split into their two tracks. The first, is a thesis research track where students form a faculty committee and work on a year-long thesis project. The second track is the studio professional track where students spend their second year taking courses at Cornell Tech, including the studio curriculum.
How does the Cornell Tech track of the M.S. in Design Technology differ from other tracks offered at Ithaca?
The students who spend their second year at Cornell Tech in the studio professional track are completely immersed in the Cornell Tech studio curriculum, the cornerstone of all graduate programs at Cornell Tech. Studio allows Design Tech students to translate and instrumentalize the methods, thinking and the fundamentals they have learned in their first year and apply and expand them to real-world problems and opportunities.
Part of the Cornell Tech Studio that students in this track engage in is Product Studio, where leading companies in the tech industry and beyond pose a challenge question to students that they are tasked with solving through design solutions. Given the opportunity and expansion of this field and collaborative discipline, we are planning for the studio professional track at Cornell Tech within the Design Tech program to grow substantially over the next decade.
What types of real world problems are Design Tech students exploring and working to address?
The areas of demand for innovative Design in the tech industry are endless. For example, in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, where old school concrete and construction are big culprits of carbon emissions, robotics, new materials, and 3D printing open new sustainable solutions. Design Tech offers a new approach through their Design + Materials hub where students engage with cutting edge digital and robotic fabrication technologies alongside advancement in responsive and adaptive materials to explore automation in construction.
Or we can look on an even grander scale. If deep space exploration is to become a reality, humans will need to be as self-sufficient as possible. Since ordering supplies from earth won’t be practical, astronauts would have to fabricate their own components for equipment and other products through additive manufacturing, and those challenges can be overcome thanks to design solutions we are working on at Cornell such as modeling software and 3D printing in space.
How does a student’s time in the M.S. program prepare them to enter the technology workforce? Where have you seen Design Tech students take their work following graduation?
Design Tech co-mentors students in project-based design learning to expand opportunities in emerging tech. It has inspired new collaborations, such as one with the XR Collaboratory where students work together to integrate cutting edge XR technologies with design and explore simulated reality and alternative forms of communication. Our students are even publishing their theses in competitive peer reviewed journals.
Because of Design Tech’s unique transdisciplinary pedagogy at the intersection of design, as well as technology that is framed with a focus on engagement on long-term societal impact, our students are set up for success in the tech sector. Our studio professional track graduates will end up in industry, alternative forms of practice, big tech and beyond, with companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple to name a few, while thesis track students will likely either go on to a PHD or into an academic structure where they may start their own cutting edge labs and teach across disciplines, creating the next generation of leaders for technology design in both industry and academia.
The application deadline for Cornell University’s Master of Science in Design Technology is Friday, January 3, 2025. For more information on application, visit the Design Tech website.