The Center for Complexity at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, informed by global events and creative practices, founded to benefit scholars, practitioners, a diverse range of partners, and the RISD community.

The most pressing problems we face today are sprawling beasts, crossing borders and boundaries, with little regard for the carefully constructed silos that characterize 20th Century knowledge and practice.

We are interested in systems and their big challenges. We believe they must be addressed by methods that link minds, disciplines, geographies, and scales.

We work between research and realization, bridging pedagogy and practice.

Society needs new mindsets and practices for approaching complex issues differently. Redesigning systems for an era of unavoidable interdependence is an integrative effort — a shared responsibility beyond any one owner, discipline, or academic tradition.