Edited by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson
Home is shaped by many factors: culture, region, environment, citizenship, economics, state of mind, and more. Making Home explores the diverse perspectives on home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations to reveal how design impacts this country, its value systems, and the people who inhabit its landscapes. Positioning home not only as a place of dwelling but also as a complex and highly subjective ecosystem, contributors show how notions of home resonate through private and public consciousness to inform the shared or conflicting histories that impact our country.
Probing urgent topics related to home such as colonialism, technological innovation, landscapes and the environment, and aesthetics and culture, Making Home uses the framework of design to pair investigative and practical analyses with imaginative and speculative ones. Contributors include designers, scholars, writers, artists, and critical thinkers across disciplines whose work and lived experiences illustrate specific circumstances that shape the contemporary home.
Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century is a co-publication with The MIT Press.
This publication accompanies the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial on view at Cooper Hewitt through August 10, 2025.
