An ultimate goal of synthetic development is the generation of functional tissue assemblies. A key question in this area is: can we design artificial gene circuits that program the development of user-defined, multicellular structures and functions, even beyond those achieved with naturally-evolved genomes? An answer to this question would be broadly enabling as it would expand the landscape of possible functional structures that can be currently built from cells. Here I will present advancement in this area, including development of synthetic cell-cell communication pathways, implementation of synthetic development trajectories in mammalian cells for patterning and morphogenesis of spheroids, synthetic pathways for functional differentiation into skeletal muscle cells, development of computational pipelines for rational design of genetic networks for morphogenesis. We hope our work will inspire next generation of genetic engineers to continue this ambitious line of research.