Stamps Community at 2026 Detroit Month of Design
The 16th annual Detroit Month of Design runs citywide from September 1 – 30, 2026, featuring over 100 events centered around the theme “Design Moves the Future.” Presented by Design Core Detroit, the festival highlights how local and global creatives use practical design, architecture, and craftsmanship to address civic and community challenges. Partners across the city — from emerging studios to established companies and educational institutions — are coming together to share their latest work and ideas, showcasing the talent and innovation that makes Detroit a UNESCO City of Design.
During the festival, Stamps alumni, faculty, staff, and students are set to participate in a variety of exhibitions, collaborations, talks, and performances. The following list highlights some of the many events featuring the Stamps community.
If you’re a member of the Stamps community participating in Detroit Month of Design and would like to be added to this list, please contact our alumni relations team.
Mutual Assembly: A Generative Art Exhibition by Creative Coding Detroit
In the low-lit industrial environment of Vander Detroit, ten LED panels animate the darkness. Grids of glowing lights coalesce into transient images, shifting and warping through the passage of time. Each of these displays contains a hand-coded generative artwork created by a member of Creative Coding Detroit (CCDET). The show exhibits members’ breadth of skill, as five experienced creative coders have been paired with five new coders in a mentor/mentee structure, embodying the group’s objective to provide access to creative growth for its members.
Mutual Assembly, a new exhibition by Creative Coding Detroit, brings the globally-recognized genre of generative art home. In the city that created Techno, Mutual Assembly responds with visual works following a similar logic of loops, repetition, noise, functions, and attention to detail.
On Friday, September 4, the exhibition’s opening night event will celebrate multiple facets of the exhibition: CCDET’s first show and introduction to the public and Detroit’s cultural scene, what is (quite possibly) the first show featuring exclusively hand-coded visual art by Detroit-based artists in the city’s history, and the incredible musical and visual talent of the group. CCDET members will DJ the event opening with live algorithmic dance music, showcasing the sonic side of code-based expression.
Stamps participants include Sam Griffith (MFA ‘25) and Abhishek Narula (MFA ‘20).
Exhibition Dates: September 4 – 6, 2026
Opening Event: Friday, September 4, 2026, 5 – 9 p.m. RSVP Requested.
Vander, 626 Harper Ave Ste B, Detroit, MI 48202, USA
Stamps MDes Design Futures Panel: An Evening of Critical Dialogue and Connection
Join the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design for a dynamic 90-minute panel discussion that brings together leading designers, researchers, and educators whose work spans the full spectrum of design futures, from technology-informed foresight to community-oriented, social justice-based methodologies. This is not a passive lecture; it is an interactive experience where attendees will witness and participate in a vital conversation about why design-informed futures are more critical than ever.
What You’ll Experience:
- Provocative Dialogue: Engage with panelists as they unpack how design can address systemic inequities, anticipate technological shifts, and co-create more just and sustainable worlds. You’ll hear firsthand how these practitioners apply speculative design, participatory methods, and futures thinking to real-world challenges.
- Live Q&A and Audience Reflection: The discussion will be structured to invite audience questions, ensuring that attendees, whether prospective students, fellow designers, or community members, can actively contribute their perspectives.
- A Window into the Stamps MDes Program: Beyond the panel, you’ll gain an inside look at the University of Michigan’s Stamps MDes program and its distinctive future-focused design education.
Stamps participants include Associate Professor Deepa Butoliya, Associate Professor and Director of MDes Program Sara Dean, and Associate Professor Sophia Brueckner, along with current Master of Design graduate students.
Thursday, September 10, 2026, 4 – 7 p.m.
SpaceLab Detroit, 607 Shelby St Ste 700, Detroit, MI 48226, USA
Industrial Heritage to Industrial Design: Learning from Manufacturing
Designers, artists and makers from both sides of the border talk about how the history of manufacturing in the Great Lakes informs the region’s unique contemporary design culture. This panel is part of our City of Design Conversations series with Stefan Novakovic.
Stamps participants include Paula Schubatis (BFA ‘13).
Sunday, September 6, 2026, 1 – 3 p.m.
SpaceLab Detroit, 607 Shelby St Ste 700, Detroit, MI 48226, USA
Grand on River Open Studios
Join us for Grand on River’s fourth year of open studios for the Month of Design. Explore the studios along the main connection corridor, with guest artists and opportunities to interact with the art. Vesper Wine and Books will be open next door offering their usual menu for purchase.
This is a rare glimpse at the inner workings of the Grand on River Artists. Participating studios include, Temple of Print, Umbel Studio, and Argonaut Studio, along with art on view of many talented guest artists. Art and prints will also be available for purchase. Come stroll through the building, enjoy a glass of wine, and get inspired.
Stamps participants include 2D Media Studio Coordinator Nicholas Dowgwillo.
Saturday, September 12, 2 – 7 p.m.
Grand on River, 5001 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI 48208, USA
Human Design Moves the Future
Human Design Moves the Future is a one-day, interactive event engaging with how city residents can help shape the future of their neighborhoods. Hosted at the Design Build Green Hub in Southwest Detroit, this activation brings together builders, planners, residents, and artists for storytelling, discussion, and hands-on design activities rooted in the voices, histories, cultural assets, and lived experiences of the community.
Centering Southwest Detroit, in particular its Mexican and Puerto Rican communities, the event imagines alternatives to traditional top-down approaches to planning and development, based on the belief that design is not neutral. Through collaborative activities, participants will consider how human-centered design, cultural preservation, and inclusive development strategies can foster more equitable and resilient neighborhoods.
Stamps participants include Julianna Sanromán Rojas (MFA ’27).
Saturday, September 12, 12 – 5 p.m.
Design Build Green Hub, 1326 18th St, Detroit, MI 48216, USA
Donut Shop Open Studio: Parts of the Process
You’re invited to a curated open studio, displaying project artifacts that walk guests through Donut Shop’s creative process, from design to fabrication.
Throughout the shop, we will display select artifacts that demonstrate how our concepts are carefully transformed into well-crafted custom furniture and lighting. These artifacts will provide insight into our process while highlighting exciting moments from recent collaborations as well as our upcoming product line.
Stamps participants include Ian Klipa (BFA’15) and Jacob Saphier (BFA and B.S.E.Mech ’16).
Monday, September 14, 2026, 4 – 8 p.m.
Donut Shop, 892 W Baltimore St, Detroit, MI 48202, USA
rootoftwo: Anyspace? Whatever. at MOCAD
rootoftwo’s Anyspace? Whatever. examines the technological systems that quietly structure contemporary civic life, from surveillance networks and algorithmic decision-making to the data infrastructures embedded within so-called “smart cities.” Rather than treating these systems as invisible background conditions, the interactive exhibition brings them into public view, inviting visitors to consider their social, political, and ethical implications. Through visionary projects, from public works and immersive spaces to artifacts and publications, rootoftwo — the creative and civic studio of Cézanne Charles and John Marshall — blends science, technology, and sociology with creative practice to challenge standard narratives of progress.
Anyspace? Whatever. is made possible with support from Creative Capital Foundation and the 2023 Creative Capital Award, Knight Foundation, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and the US Regional Arts Organizations.
On Friday, September 18, join artists rootoftwo, Taeyoon Choi, and Mother Cyborg for a conversation about technology, civic life, and the possibilities of collective imagination. The discussion will be moderated by Michael Connor. Organized on the occasion of rootoftwo’s exhibition Anyspace? Whatever., this discussion considers how systems of surveillance, artificial intelligence, and data extraction increasingly shape our public and social worlds. The speakers will explore technology not as a neutral force, but as something shaped by human values, labor, power, and collective choices.
Stamps participants include Professor John Marshall.
Exhibition Dates: Open through September 20, 2026
Special Event: Panel Discussion Friday, September 18, 6 – 8 p.m. RSVP Requested.
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48201, USA
Dive Open Studios & Viewing Room Exhibition
Dive Studios is a fine art studio collective in Detroit’s historic Corktown neighborhood in a large industrial building on Rosa Parks. Just a short walk from Michigan Central, Dive is made up of a group of 12 professional artists spanning numerous mediums. We invite you to peruse our spaces, take a peak into our processes and find unique studio works to add to your collection. The Dive Viewing Room is an exhibition space at Dive that will feature a special new group show from our artists and other work from our community.
Stamps participants include Martyna Alexander (BFA ‘12), Nathan Byrne (MFA ‘21), Sam Griffith (MFA ‘25), Andy Maticorena Kajie (MFA ‘25), and Assistant Professor Emilia Yang.
Saturday, September 19, 2026, 2 – 7 p.m.
DIVE Studios, 1927 Rosa Parks Blvd, Detroit, MI 48216, USA
MOTHERCRAFT: Microchimeric Bodies
Microchimeric Bodies is a group exhibition curated by Olivia Guterson and Amy Feigley-Lee, grounded in the scientific and biological phenomenon of microchimeris, the presence of cells from another individual within one’s body. These imperceptible cells unsettle the boundaries between self and other, with the most common natural occurrence taking place during pregnancy. Never fixed but always in process, the artist caregivers featured in this exhibition practice through an ongoing circulation of call and response. Their works emerge in the margins of making: in moments found, borrowed, or reclaimed amidst the rhythms and responsibilities of caregiving. Created within the interstices of daily life, these works are shaped by proximity, not only to one another, but also to the children, families, and communities that surround them. Through this shared condition, the works absorb, reflect, and transform as they encounter new gestures, materials, and ideas.
Stamps participants include Alumni Relations and Community Engagement Manager Katie Shulman (BFA ‘10).
Exhibition Dates: September 21 – 30, 2026
Exhibition Reception: Sunday, September 27 from 2 – 5 p.m.
Vander Detroit, 626 Harper Ave, Detroit, MI 48202, USA