This website documents projects and exhibitions from Cranbrook Academy of Art’s 3D Design department between 2001 and 2025. In 2025, the program adopted a new name and identity as Cranbrook Industrial Design, marking the beginning of a new chapter that will be documented in a separate archive.
Cranbrook was the origin of some of the most important voices in American Modernist design and continues to serve as an incubator for new thinking in design culture. During this era, the 3D Design department operated as an experimental laboratory for emerging designers. The Academy’s intimate scale and studio-based environment encouraged close exchange with Art, Craft, Architecture, and other design disciplines, united by a shared ethos of making. This unusual academic structure fostered work that was highly original, innovative, and experimental.
In 2026, Scott Klinker published Fine Design: A Studio Guide to Remixing Design, Art, Craft, and Industry, featuring many of the projects included in this archive. The book serves as both a chronicle of this era at Cranbrook Design and a celebration of the remarkable work produced by its designers. It also offers a set of studio methods for others interested in exploring a similarly cross-disciplinary approach to creative practice.
Throughout this website, designers and projects are linked to their respective studio websites whenever possible. For print-quality images or information about individual projects, please contact the designers directly.
In my role as 3D Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook from 2001 to 2025, I had the honor of working with nearly 170 young designers. Each of these talented people arrived at Cranbrook with a shared sense of wonder about the possibilities of design. Each did the difficult work of discovering and developing an authentic voice. I now watch with pride and fascination as they carry that research into the world, finding new collaborators, resources, audiences, and industries through which to realize their visions.
Cranbrook 3D is both a community and an ethos, one that continues to find its way into the world through an extraordinary diversity of practices. The work presented here remains fully owned by the designers and is shown with their permission. This archive is a tribute to the remarkable talent of our community, but it is also an outward-facing platform intended to connect their work with new audiences, clients, galleries, collectors, and industry partners.
I hope the archive will continue to grow, and for that we need the participation of the community it represents. Please share your new projects so we can continue to document the many ways Cranbrook 3D lives on through the work of its designers.
With warm gratitude,
Scott Klinker
Designer-in-Residence, 2001–2025
Mail: Cranbrook #801, 39221 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303
school: https://cranbrookart.edu/
emails about this archive: klinkerscott(at)gmail.com