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Learn more about the BA DAP and talk with a recruiting specialist by calling 520-621-4231 or completing this form:
Offered by the College of Fine Arts, the four-year Bachelor’s in Design Arts and Practices is for students interested in applying interdisciplinary creative thinking and creative making to tackle real-world problems, including climate change, public health emergencies and social and environmental inequity.
CAPLA offers two of the BA DAP degree’s four emphasis areas: Object Design and Spatial Design. As a BA DAP student, you’ll develop critical thinking and interdisciplinary design skills as well as gain a practical understanding of theories and contemporary issues. Discover how to apply design thinking and making skills to problem-seeking and problem-solving, social justice, environmental design, health and wellbeing and much more.
Print Design is offered by the School of Art and Screen Design is offered by the School of Information. The College of Fine Arts confers the degree, and advising is managed through CFA, as well.
What You'll Learn
- Design thinking
- Divers media, scales and applications of design practices
- 2D and 3D design fundamentals
- Hand craft and digital fabrication
- Innovative and ecological mass production processes
- Analog and digital representation and professional communication
- Material and ecologies for design
- Contemporary art, design and architectural histories and theories
- Handheld, portable objects and systems development
- Interior, installation and exhibition design
- Mapping, analyzing and responding to exterior and urban environments
You’ll graduate ready to thrive in a profession of increasing importance that is solving the world's most urgent and complex challenges.
By communicating complex information through data visualizations, designing innovative solutions using rapid prototyping and fabrication, and devising new ways to conceive and inhabit spaces, designers solve the world’s most urgent and complex challenges.
Beth Weinstein, Associate Professor of Architecture
Application Deadline
The four-year, 120-unit BA in Design Arts and Practices prepares students to collaboratively work across media, scales and disciplines to tackle complex problems.
The interactive experience of the Object and Spatial Design emphasis areas, our outstanding faculty and our interdisciplinary courses will prepare you for a wide variety of work.
In the BA DAP, students develop tangible technical skills, knowledge and experience, as well as the soft skills in collaboration, empathy and human-centered design needed for successful design careers today and into the future. With the BA DAP, you’ll be prepared for careers in user experience and interface design, object and product design, visual and graphic communication, interior design, urban design, exhibition and performance design, design research, experience strategy and more.
The CAPLA Student Experience
Design culture is unlike any collegiate experience. You’ll be part of a community not just of fellow students, but also of faculty who are committed to the exploration, intensity and fun of studio learning and making in our state-of-the-art facilities and the diverse multicultural community of Tucson.
Meet the BA in Design Arts & Practices Community
Christine Ufondu '25 B.Arch
Christine Ufondu, who is also pursuing in a Minor in Real Estate Development, was born in Houston, Texas, but mostly grew up in Rivers State, Nigeria. Though she chose to come to CAPLA site unseen, it was the right decision: she loves the community of faculty, students and immersive design.
Michael Scott Silver, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Assistant Professor of Architecture Michael Scott Silver's research and practice focus on the relationship between existing cultures of labor and the effects new automation technologies will have on the built environment.
Beth Weinstein, Associate Professor of Architecture
Beth Weinstein’s practice and research move between the architectural and the performative, and across scales from drawing to performance-installations to urban interventions, investigating spatial manifestations and invisibilities of political, environmental and labor issues.
CAPLA Design/Build: Students, Faculty and Clients Building a Changing World
CAPLA Design/Build involves students in hands-on design and construction projects via studio courses, independent study and other courses with lab components.
In CAPLA Design/Build, you'll learn by doing—a powerful way to gain and retain knowledge because of the immediate application to tangible design and build problems.
Ready to design a changing world?
Learn more about the Bachelor of Arts in Design Arts and Practices by contacting us at capla-ugrad@arizona.edu or begin your application now: