This article aims to introduce the paradigm of distributional robustness from the field of convex optimization to tackle optimal design problems under uncertainty. We consider realistic situations where the physical model, and thereby the cost function of the design to be minimized depend on uncertain parameters. The probability distribution of the latter is itself known imperfectly, through a nominal law, reconstructed from a few observed samples. The distributionally robust optimal design problem is an intricate bilevel program which consists in minimizing the worst value of a statistical quantity of the cost function (typically, its expectation) when the law of the uncertain parameters belongs to a certain ``ambiguity set''. We address three classes of such problems: firstly, this ambiguity set is made of the probability laws whose Wasserstein distance to the nominal law is less than a given threshold; secondly, the ambiguity set is based on the first- and second-order moments of the actual and nominal probability laws. Eventually, a statistical quantity of the cost other than its expectation is made robust with respect to the law of the parameters, namely its conditional value at risk. Using techniques from convex duality, we derive tractable, single-level reformulations of these problems, framed over augmented sets of variables. Our methods are essentially agnostic of the optimal design framework; they are described in a unifying abstract framework, before being applied to multiple situations in density-based topology optimization and in geometric shape optimization. Several numerical examples are discussed in two and three space dimensions to appraise the features of the proposed techniques.