Design@Large

The Design@Large (D@L) lecture series highlights a different central theme within design during each fall, winter, and spring quarter to inspire attendees and showcase the brightest minds tackling issues impacting humanity. Unlike other credit courses at UC San Diego, D@L is open to the public as a way of sharing cutting-edge research and innovative insights with a wider audience. 

D@L was pioneered as a collaborative effort with UC San Diego faculty who shared the collective vision of drawing together a community of individuals from various design disciplines. A new wave of societal challenges, cultural values, and technological advancements is creating exciting opportunities for designers everywhere to make a global impact, and Design@Large provides the chance to learn about these opportunities as they emerge. 

Spring 2025: Design and Politics in Transition

Faculty hosts: Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió and Lilly Irani

Who should design serve? How does design work in a crisis, and also recognizing that some people have been living in crisis for hundreds of years? And how might we reimagine design as a radical discipline for dialogue and action? From reinterpreting legal histories and theories that enable the design of place, to redesigning food distribution systems around food and land justice, to transforming what it means to be family, design offers many ways to transform our relationships with ourselves, each other and our environment. Design and Politics in Transition offers inspiration, theory, and guidance on a variety of design practices and epistemologies that together help us transition toward different, more equitable worlds where all can thrive–even during historical moments of political and social strife.

As always, Design@Large is open to the public. Register via our Eventbrite page. 

• Danielle Dean, UC San Diego, 04/09/25
• Meryem Kamil, UC Irvine, 04/16/25
• Terria Smith, Heyday Berkeley Roundhouse 04/23/25
• K-Sue Park, UCLA, 04/30/25
• Anita Chan, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 05/14/25
• Elisa Iturbe, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 05/21/25
• Ellee Igoe, Foodshed Cooperative, 05/28/25

Past D@L

Watch all recorded D@L series here:

Winter 2025: Antisocial Media

Spring 2024: AI and the New Information Age

Design@Large Retrospective

Full Design@Large Video Archive