Center for Future Design

We support organizations in shaping their future(s), helping them anticipate upheavals in advance and develop new fields of action in a preventive manner. We analyze their current action plans from a new perspective and question existing thought patterns to make people and their organizations fit for the future.

The goal of the Center for Future Design at the University of Arts Linz is to teach people how to plan the future with a more  sustainable, diverse and above all peaceful world in mind, while developing new social techniques to successfully shape this outcome. Future Design’s core value lies in understanding that any intervention to an  existing system must be for the common good, and it is not about exclusively shaping one’s own future or that of an organization. The Center for Future Design is a UNESCO Chair, a position that brings it  into contact with a tremendous network of people and institutions worldwide. Their academic formats, from seminars and conferences to executive education, reflects this internationality, especially through their collaborations with top universities such as Stanford, Oxford and Beijing. 

Center for Future Design disseminates scientific results in journals, books and conference proceedings. Their findings are also accessible to a broad readership through articles published in newspapers and magazines, as well as the many lecture series its team participates in. Although the last few years have been characterized by intensive engagement in Western innovation ecosystems such as Silicon Valley,  the Center for Future Design team is aware of the importance of a decolonial mentality in the coming years, especially in exchanges with academic institutions and project partnerships. The Center therefore aims to turn its attention to the Global South, the Middle East and Asia to learn more about creating a sustainable, diverse and above all, a peaceful future.