The School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts is one of the seven specialized secondary colleges under the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and it is also the first specialized branch in the new campus in the history of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. It is the product of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the new historical period, adjusting the overall school scale and development plan, focusing on the frontier trend of urban cultural development, and adapting to the new problems brought about by China's urbanization process and a series of emerging social needs. The Central Academy of Fine Arts has accelerated the pace of specialty adjustment and discipline construction by establishing the School of Urban Design, and actively expanded the design education system. Relying on the advantages of the Central Academy of Fine Arts as the highest-level art education, creation and research center in China, the Urban Design Institute has explored a brand-new teaching system, reflected its own value and characteristics, trained innovative professionals and led the development of urban culture in China.

In the second half of 2002, under the active advocacy of Pan He, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and Yang Li, secretary of the Party Committee, the Central Academy of Fine Arts cooperated with the Dongcheng District Government to establish the Urban Design College of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Dongcheng District. In September, 2002, the first batch of undergraduate students formally entered the school, and the undergraduate teaching system was established. In the process of running a school in Dongcheng District for more than two years, the School of Urban Design has actively explored new modes of running a school and accumulated valuable experience for future development.

In February 2005, the college moved to Shunyi Houshayu Campus. After many relocations, the college has entered a period of rapid development, with gradually enriched specialty settings and gradually established teaching structure. In March 2006, the Foundation Department was established, with two teaching and research sections, namely, Modeling Foundation and Design Foundation, to provide students with basic course teaching in the first academic year. In addition, professional teaching is carried out on the basis of four major departments: urban information design department, urban image design department, urban clothing design department and urban image design department. There are several open professional direction studios and several teaching auxiliary platforms to ensure the smooth progress of professional teaching.

Urban design institute originates from exploration and is based on innovation. Its pioneering process from scratch, from creation to development has accumulated valuable experience for later development. On the one hand, on the basis of traditional art and design education, combined with the needs of contemporary society, the college gradually summed up its own school-running ideas and defined its academic orientation, discipline development direction and teaching characteristics. On the other hand, in practice, the School of Urban Design, by virtue of its young and flexible advantages, opened its schools, actively tried and innovated in teaching mode, management mechanism and other aspects, accumulated rich experience in running schools in a short time, and gathered certain academic resources, which provided a strong guarantee for teaching and scientific research and laid a solid foundation for the next development of the College. The overall shape of the logo of the urban design institute was born out of the logo of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, but on the basis of the original shape of the logo of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, it was divided into six squares with the same size, and each square had a different color. These six squares symbolize the six departments of the School of Urban Design, with different representatives from top to bottom: yellow for graduate department, green for urban information design department, red for urban image design department, blue for urban image design department and purple for the city.