Before becoming dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, the author was a professor of architecture at Harvard University where she taught design studio, lecture, and seminar courses on topics including digital technology and the history of design and an introductory course on the environmental impact of material selection and application. She is also the principal of an architecture firm and, as such, have dealt with the struggle to do the right thing on real projects, in real time, with real budgets and real constraints. As someone who has a foot firmly planted in academia and a foot firmly planted in practice, in this article the author wants to address the design of objects and buildings and where she sees the challenges and opportunities in the future. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)