Carnegie Mellon School of Design

Carnegie Mellon School of Design

Principal facility of the Carnegie Mellon School of Design
Type	Design
Established	1900
Parent institution	Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts
Location	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Language	English
Website	design.cmu.edu

The School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University is a degree-granting institution within a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The School of Design is one of five schools within the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts offering both under and post graduate education. The School is accredited by Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and awards BDES, MA, MDES, MPS, MII-PS, DDES, and PhD degrees. The School of Design has 20 full-time and 12 adjunct faculty, and a student body of approximately 225.

The program is noted for its balance between theory and 'making' and its emphasis on process-oriented approaches to design.

The university began as the Carnegie Technical Schools founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began to offer four-year degrees. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University.

Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design is one of the oldest programs in North America and the Carnegie Technical School offered classes in design as early as 1915, and in 1936 awarded its first Industrial Design degree. Graphic Design existed at that time as a series of electives within Painting, Decorating and the Sculpture departments. In 1967 the Department of Design was officially established with four-year degree programs in industrial and graphic design. In 1997 the department changed ‘graphic’ to communication design.

In 1994 The School of Design became the first institution to offer a degree in Interaction Design with the launch of a two-year masters (MDes). It was one of the first schools in North America to offer a PhD in Design (2000) and is one of only four or five schools in the U.S. to offer one now.

The School is known for its expertise in service design and in 2004 helped to launch the Service Design Network (with Koln International School of Design, Linkopings Universitet, Politecnico di Milano and Domus Academy) and its faculty have contributed to a growing body of research in this area.

In 2014 the School introduced a new area of specialty: Transition Design that focuses on design-led societal change toward more sustainable futures.