UC San Diego congratulates Park & Market Resident Partner Burnham Center for Community Advancement and Campus Partner UC San Diego Design Lab on the announcement of a new organization to lead the planning and execution of the World Design Capital 2024 initiative.
Following a joint bid, San Diego and Tijuana were selected together as the 2024 World Design Capital, a designation awarded every two years to cities for their effective use of design to drive economic, social, cultural and environmental development. The region’s winning bid reflects the collective efforts of founding partners UC San Diego Design Lab, Burnham Center for Community Advancement, Design Forward Alliance and the City of San Diego and City of Tijuana, as well as numerous community supporters.
San Diego-Tijuana World Design Capital 2024, the newly formed 501c3 organization coordinating the regional effort to bid on this prestigious award, has established a dual-executive model. Michele Morris will serve as Chief Design Officer and Carlos de la Mora as Chief Executive Officer. Morris, who previously served as the Associate Director of the Design Lab, co-led the community-sourced bid process that resulted in the award. Most recently, de la Mora lent his collaborative spirit, vision and executive leadership to ULI Mexico, where he served as executive director. Morris’s passion for humanity-centered design and high-impact initiatives paired with de la Mora’s business acumen and cross-cultural experience will ensure both design excellence and operational success.
The World Design Capital is a long-term transformative platform and year-long celebration designed to foster civic pride, increase public awareness of the importance of human-centered design, and drive collaboration and innovation that enhance the host region and improve the quality of life for its residents. The joint bid by San Diego and Tijuana will elevate both communities and strengthen their bond as one binational region that will continue to work together beyond 2024.
UC San Diego Design Lab works on major societal issues, such as large-scale education, automation, healthcare, visualization of complex phenomena and data, social interactions, citizen science, and ethical issues that are of ever-increasing importance. For the Design Lab, design is a way of thinking, addressing the core issues, always taking a systems point of view, and emphasizing the role of people in the complex systems of the modern world.
Design Lab’s mission was upheld throughout the bid for 2024 World Design Capital thanks to the work of Resident Partner Burnham Center for Community Advancement. The Burnham Center is a think-and-do tank that helps make the San Diego binational region a better place to live, work and play for all. It serves as a nexus point where community stakeholders and multi-sector partners come together to identify regional needs, find innovative solutions and tackle some of our most pressing issues.
UC San Diego Park & Market is delighted to elevate the work of these and other partners as they embody a commitment to our region’s shared cultural heritage, form connections across borders in our unique, binational region, and serve as catalysts for sustainable growth and change that will benefit all San Diegans.
More information about San Diego-Tijuana World Design Capital 2024 is available at www.home2024.com.