Université Paris-Saclay launches design centre

New French university launches the Design Spot to back pioneering projects

Designed to support thousands of researchers, engineers and inventors as they develop ground-breaking projects, Université Paris-Saclay has launched a design centre to anticipate the needs of tomorrow’s society.

As design combines creativity and sensitivity with technology and economics to create better products, experiences or services – appealing to emotions, intuitiveness and senses to spark an instant attachment to a product or a service – it has become a crucial factor of competitiveness in a number of sectors.

That’s why the Design Spot will have three main roles.

First, it will provide laboratories, researchers and engineers with the resources to connect projects with real life applications and markets. Second, the centre will help students become more familiar with the discipline of design and encourage them to integrate it into their projects. Third, the centre will have a mission to enable research on the discipline itself. 

The centre will be managed by Vincent Créance, former director of design at Plan Créatif, a prestigious product design and corporate identity agency, former director of design and communication for Alcatel, and Chairman and CEO of MBD Design France – an esteemed design agency known for projects in the transport sector, particularly rail, responsible for collaborations with Christian Lacroix, and designing the Singapore metro, to name a few examples.

Créance therefore has an extensive knowledge of industry, from SMEs to large corporations, across the globe.

He defines his profession of 30 years as a ‘passion’. Now involved in design education, he plans to pass on his experience and is delighted to be working on developing the centre, a project that is both creative and emblematic of Université Paris-Saclay.