Where Design Breathes, Moves, and Imagines the Future
The Immersive Design Research Lab (IDRL) is a new 14,000-square-foot research space at the Mosaic Promenade in Downtown Long Beach, dedicated to creative experimentation at the intersection of design, art, and lived experience. Within this raw urban site, the Lab hosts its signature program, Design Happenings, a series of participatory, “experience-first” engagements inspired by the radical performance art Happenings of the 1950s and ’60s and re-envisioned as advanced design methods.
In each Design Happening, visitors are not just observers but collaborators, moving through spaces, pausing for encounters, and navigating the in-between (間 Ma) of embodied experience. From sensing materiality and immateriality to thinking through touch, sound, and movement, these happenings unfold as design in action, creating moments of wonder that double as content for future worlds. Together, the IDRL and its Design Happenings form a living research platform for exploring how design can help us imagine and shape complex futures.
