BFAFurniture
Learn the art of furniture design and shape your creative practice where design and craft meet.
Overview
Break new ground in furniture design
Shawn HibmaCronan's (BFA Furniture/Sculpture 2009) shares his creative path from CCA and beyond. Watch more alumni profiles.
With deep roots in the Arts and Crafts movement, the Furniture program prepares students for versatile careers in a rapidly changing landscape. We teach craft-based methods alongside digital fabrication methods, emphasizing innovation, sustainability, and collaboration. Students work closely with celebrated faculty to make full-scale sculpture and furniture in our wide range of studios and shops. And if your interests go beyond hands-on making and into fabrication and material innovation, you can add a minor in Industrial Design to your Furniture major.
Studios & Shops
Learn to set up your own workshop
In studios and courses focused on special techniques, you’ll learn to conceptualize, prototype, and produce finished pieces of furniture. You’ll focus on both analog and digital skills, including sketching and drawing, computer drafting, woodworking, metalworking, upholstery, and manufacturing processes. Faculty work with you individually to prepare you for local and national exhibition opportunities, competitions, and a culminating thesis project. By the time you graduate, you’ll know how to set up and run your own workshops or studios.
Create transformative designs
Experimentation is at the heart of furniture design at CCA. In addition to traditional manufacturing, you’ll study exciting processes at the intersection of craft-based design and cutting-edge technology. Digital fabrication tools, such as CNC routers and millers, laser cutters, 3D printers, and plasma cutters, empower you to investigate different materials and create inventive design solutions.
Collaborations across disciplines
We’ll teach you about current and emerging business strategies in furniture design through collaborative studios with local museums, nonprofits, and design firms. Recent partners include Autodesk, California Academy of Sciences, Concreteworks, Exploratorium, Headlands Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, SFMOMA, and Workshop Residence. Working alongside professionals in architecture, interior design, and industrial design, you’ll build the critique and teamwork skills they’ll need in your professional life.
Your maker’s life at CCA
- Network with local companies and studios
- Collaborate with local museums and design firms
- Attend the International Contemporary Furniture Fair
- Study with renowned visiting professors each fall
- Take intensive workshops with leading artists
- Collaborate with architecture and design students
- Exhibit in retail and public spaces
- Build a full-scale portfolio of work
- Design, build, and mount a senior show
Faculty
One-on-one mentorship
Our faculty are scholars, researchers, small studio owners, creative reclaimers of discarded material, mixed media sculptors, and so much more. They share their body of knowledge with design students, encouraging them to take risks in the studio as they build upon their individual strengths.
Shu Bertrand, Chair of Furniture
As the chair of the Industrial Design and Furniture programs at CCA, Shu Bertrand brings 25 years of industry experience and expertise using human-centered, zero-waste design principles to inspire students to become environmentally minded entrepreneurs and stewards of sustainable products and practices that nourish, spark, and shape the future.
Shu has designed internationally in Paris, Milan, and Seoul and led creative teams to transform insights into new products and business opportunities. In the Bay Area, she has worked in studios such as Astro Studios, Incase, and Steelcase, and was inspired by her love of family gatherings and cooking to launch Aplat.com, a soft-goods culinary design company.
Curriculum
We think with our hands
Develop and hone your design instincts
Furniture at CCA is a combination of studio art, craft, and design. Learn—among many other things—woodworking, sketching and perspective techniques, small-scale production strategies, and the historical and theoretical roots of contemporary furniture forms. Courses are designed to immerse you in interdisciplinary making and dynamic conversations around innovation and sustainability. View sample courses.
Minor in Industrial Design
Take your passion for craft and expand it with the skills needed to thrive in industry by minoring in Industrial Design. You’ll take courses that will teach you the fundamentals of product design so that you can hone your creativity with an eye toward making as an individual practitioner, entrepreneur, or professional designer. Learn more.
Investigate ideas through every dimension
Before diving into their chosen major, every undergraduate participates in the First Year Experience. Students explore a wide range of materials and tools over the course of two semesters. Faculty from different disciplines guide studio projects, group critiques, and theoretical discussions, setting students up for success throughout their major coursework.
BFA Furniture
Core Studio
- Drawing 1
- 3.0 units
- 2D, 3D, and 4D
- 9.0 units
Furniture Major Requirements
- Furniture Fundamentals: Materiality & Structure
- 3.0 units
- DC1: Design Drawing
- 3.0 units
- Drawing for Furniture: Visualization
- 3.0 units
- Investigative Studios: Atelier, Conceptual Object
- 6.0 units
- Production Studios: Multiples (formerly Production 1), Exhibition (formerly Production 2)
- 6.0 units
- Design + Make Studios: Chair, Cabinet, Illuminate, Soft
- 12.0 units
- Fabrication Lab: Hybrid Practice
- 3.0 units
- Senior Studio 1 and 2
- 6.0 units
Additional Studio Requirements
- Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio
- 3.0 units
- Critical Ethnic Studies Studio
- 3.0 units
- Studio Electives
- 12.0 units
Humanities & Sciences Requirements
- Writing 1
- 3.0 units
- Writing 2
- 3.0 units
- Introduction to the Arts
- 3.0 units
- Introduction to the Modern Arts
- 3.0 units
- Foundation in Critical Ethnic Studies
- 3.0 units
- Media History: History and Theory of 20th Century Furniture
- 3.0 units
- Critical Ethnic Studies Seminar (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- Literary and Performing Arts Studies (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- Philosophy and Critical Theory (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- Social Science/History (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- Science/Math (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- History of Art and Visual Culture (2000 level)
- 3.0 units
- Humanities and Sciences Electives (2000 or 3000 level, at least 6 units must be 3000 level)
- 12.0 units
Total 120.0 units
Careers
Build your future in furniture design
Yvonne Mouser (BFA Furniture 2006) describes how CCA empowers "artists working in the field of design." Watch more alumni profiles.
Our students emerge from the program with versatile, adaptable skills in furniture design. Our alumni make conceptual sculpture, teach woodworking, design custom furniture for retail spaces, create small-run production pieces, and exhibit widely. Whether they become independent shop owners or work for major architectural firms, they are thoughtful collaborators with fine-tuned design instinct.
Benjamin Saperstein (BFA Furniture 2016) discusses merging craft and concept at CCA and beyond. Watch more videos.
Potential career paths
- Independent furniture designer
- Independent product designer
- Architectural consultant
- Independent artist
- Entrepreneur
- Educator
News & Events
What’s happening in our community?
How to Apply
Discover your craft
Our students are often interested in using real materials to find new opportunities in physical design. They want to learn carpentry within a creative studio space. Under the guidance of world-renowned faculty, they also want to try their hand at merging traditional building methods with cutting-edge digital technology.
Find your creative community at CCA
