Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion
A Platform for Design-led Innovation
This is the century for design.
We believe that no other discipline is as equipped to address current problems, forecast new futures, and shift conventional thinking. With sights on a new horizon for transdisciplinary innovation set against the backdrop of entangled social, cultural, technological and ecological contexts, we are forging Design Fusion as a new mode of practice.
The Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion serves as a unique design-led platform to foster transdisciplinary innovation across Carnegie Mellon University. Founded through an endowment from Professor Emeritus Joseph Ballay and his wife Sue, the Ballay Center establishes a formal presence of design expertise and outreach at CMU, and creates a new outlet for the School of Design to advance its distinct approaches to problem-solving, interdisciplinary collaboration, and curricular innovation, to drive progress across the University. The last decade has seen a significant rise in awareness and demand for design thinking and design methods for innovation. However, the widening spectrum of complex social, cultural, ecological, and technological problems requires new approaches for transdisciplinary practices that frame problems for near and long-term impact and inspire progress. To engage with these problem spaces in uniquely CMU ways, the Ballay Center provides the School of Design a platform to establish a design-led paradigm that enhances the existing creative practices across CMU in the arts, humanities, sciences, and business.
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Design Fusion is the way we work.
We partner with internal units and external organizations to develop forward-thinking projects, cultivate creative solutions to complex challenges, and bring faculty, staff, students and partners together in collaborative, real-world settings. Through these partnerships, we aim to expand the boundaries of design and its impact on society.
Design Fusion Courses
The Ballay Center provides several exciting course opportunities in concert with programs in the School of Design. Students across our campus have access to select courses to expand their skills, learn new methods, and acquire design sensitivities. Elective courses open to the entire campus community are structured to complement each student’s primary path of study with fundamental design training.
Professional Education
The Ballay Center offers tailored professional and continuing educational opportunities for a wide range of group audiences. With the goal to leverage design for innovation and impact, organizations seek the Ballay Center’s broad range of immersive modular workshops to acquire design methods, skills, and perspectives. Our professional and continuing education programs are taught by faculty in the School of Design with contribution from colleagues across the University and industry professionals who customize their world-class research, teaching, and practice for these educational experiences.
The Ballay Center extends the reach and audience of the School of Design’s long-established Executive Education program which has hosted programs for the United States Air Force Academy, Penske, Highmark Health, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Software Engineering Institute, and many more.
Practice-based Research
Design Fusion Practice-based Research expands design teaching and research collaborations with industry, government, non-profit organizations, and foundations along particular initiatives that aim to create new knowledge, advance scholarship, and expand the reach of design. The Center supports high profile, integrative research agendas initiated by faculty along key contemporary themes with a goal for cross-disciplinary representation pulling from all seven colleges and schools at CMU on a massively integrative scale.
More information on existing Practice Research programs and Design Fusion Fund grants for faculty coming soon.
Strategy Sessions+
The Ballay Center excels in coordinating sessions to help you analyze a problem and develop actionable next steps. Our Facilitated Strategy Sessions provide a semi-structured space for partners to express concerns and ideas in non-hierarchical and productive ways, leveraging design methods. For students, faculty, and staff looking for quick conversations, design input, or feedback on ideas, we are available for Design Fusion Office Hours to help you advance your projects, talk through challenges and opportunities, and explore how key designerly input might help you to level up your work.
Exhibitions
The Ballay Center hosts temporary exhibitions that raise the visibility of the School of Design, its partnerships, collaborations, and innovative work happening across the School and within the Ballay Center.
People
Meet the faces behind our center's programs and projects. From our esteemed faculty and professional affiliates to our invaluable staff—every individual plays a pivotal role in our collaborative ecosystem.
Ballay Center News
Learn about our latest announcements, breakthroughs, and stories. Discover the cutting-edge projects our talented designers are working on, get to know the brilliant minds behind them, and stay updated on all happenings within the center.
Connect
For information about the Ballay Center’s research and educational programs or general inquiries, please contact:
BallayCenter@design.cmu.edu
For engagement and partnership opportunities:
Aaron Martin
Associate Director of Institutional Partnerships
College of Fine Arts
aaronmartin@cmu.edu
Rebecca Abrams
Associate Director of Development
College of Fine Arts
rebeccaabrams@cmu.edu
For media inquiries:
Joe Lyons
Marketing and Communications Manager
School of Design
jwlyons@cmu.edu