Beijing Normal University School of Future Design is a new school established during the difficult time of a pandemic and is oriented towards future production and lifestyles. This is not the first time we have faced a global pandemic, and almost after each major global pandemic, our culture and technology experienced remarkably changes.

Dating back hundreds of years, Europe, which had just experienced the bubonic plague pandemic, quickly recovered from the plague and soon emerged the great Renaissance, which was a human-centered revival of culture and science rejuvenating the classical world. European culture was profoundly affected and prospered for centuries.

Today, the age seems to push us to the same historical crossroad, as the world enters a future with uncertainties. Both art and science are essentially a search for truth and order, an insight into the mysteries of the universe and the heart of people, and design is an important means of combining art and science. We need to face a post-pandemic era with a new technological civilization, where the design will be newly articulated and comprehended in the future, and many art and design professionals will be reclassified and redefined.With the emergence of new technologies, the world is changing dramatically and people are moving towards a new way of living, featuring diversity, electronics, new languages, new communicative modes and new experiential sense. Future talents are required to actively confront future life by constantly upgrading information technologies by improving life-long learning abilities as well as comprehensive and analyzing abilities of social trends. New technologies have pushed society to a brand new stage, while solving the problems of the past and creating new contradictions. This poses new challenges for artists and designers, and in this “future” context they will have more space to provide new answers to new questions.

Both art and science are essentially a search for truth and order, an insight into the mysteries of the universe and people’s heart, and design is an important means of combining art and science. We are about to face a post-pandemic era with a new technological civilization, where design will be newly articulated and comprehended in the future, and many art and design professionals will be reclassified and redefined. The School of Future Design gathers a group of outstanding scholars and experts from industry who represent the level of this discipline and lead the direction of future art and design education. We hope to cultivate leading design talents with innovative design thinking and the courage to face the future and make a difference.