About Cara Cragan

I believe design is both a cultural act and an operational strategy. Through my practice, Cara Cragan Design Living, I create environments where narrative and function coexist—spaces that inspire delight while also advancing transformation.

For more than two decades, I’ve worked across typologies: cultural institutions, corporate headquarters, immersive environments, and residences. My career has taken me from Los Angeles to New York to Abu Dhabi, always at the intersection of art, architecture, and experience. Along the way, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with some of the most influential voices in design—Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Bruce Mau, and David Rockwell—and shaping projects with leading institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Freeman, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and UC Irvine.

From 2009–2014, I served as Director of Architectural Projects at the Guggenheim Foundation, overseeing the development of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, designed by Frank Gehry. I acted as the Foundation’s primary liaison to Gehry Partners and to Abu Dhabi stakeholders, guiding design development, curatorial strategies, and operations planning for a museum ten times the size of Guggenheim New York. I also co-led the Guggenheim Helsinki competition—the largest architectural competition in history—coordinating more than 1,700 submissions and an international jury process.

Most recently, I advised on the development of the Langson Institute and Museum of California Art (IMCA) at UC Irvine, helping shape institutional vision, strategy, and project planning. I also designed a fully constructed confidential exhibition in the UAE—one of my most dynamic works to date—integrating architecture, narrative, and spectacle to transform cultural experience.

Earlier in my career, I spent nearly a decade at Gehry Partners, where Frank Gehry recruited me after graduate school at Yale. I worked as a designer, project architect, and project manager on cultural institutions, hotels, restaurants, and exhibitions—including the Art Gallery of Ontario—as well as product design and workplace projects. Later, as a Studio Leader at Rockwell Group in New York, I collaborated directly with David Rockwell on projects ranging from a Fortune 50 corporate headquarters to an avant-garde immersive theater.

Today, through Cara Cragan Design Living, I continue to work with both cultural and corporate clients on projects that demand imagination, diplomacy, and transformation. My tools are as strategic as they are sensorial: I’m a certified Authorized Partner for Everything DiSC®, a graduate of the Wharton Entrepreneurship Accelerator, and have completed IDEO U’s AI & Design Thinking course. These frameworks deepen my ability to align human behavior, organizational culture, and space.

I live between New York City and the Hudson Valley, where my husband and I are renovating a Victorian-era home and studio we call Yellow Wood. Gardening, foraging, and creating in this landscape feed my practice as much as my experience with global institutions. For me, design is not a profession but a way of living—an ongoing practice of connecting people, culture, and place.

Contact Cara Cragan @ cara@caracragan.com