Living Light at Kennedy Space Center PC Space Perspective and Beyond Earth - Richelle Ellis

The Los Angeles Design Festival (LADF) makes its much-anticipated return with a bold and immersive citywide celebration of design as a tool for progress and possibility. This year’s edition invites the public to engage with the theme “Design Futurism”—an expansive, multidisciplinary exploration of how design can respond to complex challenges, reimagine systems, and inspire meaningful change.

With programming that spans from Pasadena to Long Beach, the 2025 LADF features installations, workshops, block parties, keynotes, studio tours, and symposia, creating moments of encounter between emerging talents, established creators, and engaged communities. Far from science fiction, Design Futurism reflects a deeply human-centered vision: one that honors the past, engages the present, and dares to imagine a more just, inclusive, and resilient tomorrow.

“Design has always been a language of possibility and problem solving. This year’s theme invites us to reflect on how we design not only for efficiency or aesthetics, but for empathy, equity, and long-term impact.”

Erika Abrams, Executive Director of LADF



Planet City - Liam Young



Thursday, June 26

Programming focuses on emerging talent—students, recent grads, career changers, and self-taught designers. At ArtCenter in Pasadena, the L.A. Forever Hackathon convenes multidisciplinary teams for a four-day sprint to create a community toolkit offering equity-centered strategies for disaster response and resilience.

Friday, June 27

Citywide studio tours will take place throughout the afternoon, leading into three simultaneous LADF Block Parties hosted at Helms Design District, ROW DTLA, and Long Beach Design District.

View of Earth through Living Light, inside Neptune One at 100,000 feet. PC Space Perspective - Beyond Earth - Richelle Ellis



Saturday-Sunday, June 28-29

Dive deep into Design Futurism on the final weekend of the festival. ROW DTLA presents a showcase of speculative design projects that ask how we might live, move, eat, and connect in worlds not yet realized. Simultaneously, in Culver City’s Helms Design District, the Southern California chapter of NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects) hosts a powerful symposium on rebuilding Los Angeles as a part of the L.A. Forever track.

Additional event highlights include:

• A look inside CSULB’s Immersive Design Research Lab, showcasing student and faculty explorations in spatial storytelling.
• A speculative installation by Kevin Sherrod inside the historic Acres of Books building, rethinking food systems and community health.
• A launch of Kevin Bethune’s new book, Nonlinear, at ROW DTLA. The author will also participate in the “We Have Seen the Future” track.
  

Ellis 04 - Phantom Ecology - Aroussiak Gabrielian