The Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion establishes a formal presence of design expertise and outreach at Carnegie Mellon University and provides a new platform for the School of Design to advance its unique approaches to problem solving, interdisciplinary collaborations, integrating design methods and practices with other disciplines, and driving progress across the University. Founded through an endowment from Professor Emeritus Joseph Ballay and his wife Sue, the Ballay Center operates as a central administrative hub for organizing design course offerings to the wider CMU campus community, professional education, sponsored projects, collaborations, and design research.
There is a decided transdisciplinary quality to our research and practice in the Ballay Center. The explicit naming of the Center to include “design fusion” emphasizes the uniting of disciplinary design with other disciplinary practices. When disciplinary boundaries dissolve, true collaboration can occur; and with collaboration comes discoveries and innovation. Design is a social practice as much as it is a creative practice – the Ballay Center is forging new ways of working together with practitioners, industry, colleagues, and partners. In this way, we are developing design-led research methods and practice as inclusive and empowering ways to serve as catalysts for strategic transformative development, innovation, and progress.
Programming for AY 2023-2024 coming soon.
For information, please contact: BallayCenter@design.