In 2013, architectural designer Deanna Van Buren and social scientist Barb Toews established Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (DJ+DS) to facilitate the design of more restorative and healing criminal-justice environments through community engagement in jails and prisons. Their work is featured in the exhibition By the People: Designing a Better America, curated by Cynthia Smith, Curator of...

In the late 1990s, the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) in Tacoma, Washington announced its plan to relocate from the bank building that it had occupied since 1935 to a new site on the waterfront with views of Mt. Rainier.  National Design Award-winning architect Antoine Predock was selected to design a building that more than doubled...

Cynthia Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design speaks with architects Rosanne Haggerty and David Baker about community building through innovative affordable housing design.

Louis Sullivan’s ornament can be appreciated on both a large scale—think Chicago’s Carson Pirie Scott building—and a small one—this cast iron doorplate. Having been removed from its original location during the mid-twentieth century, this doorplate is from Adler & Sullivan’s last commission, the Guaranty Building (now called the Prudential Building). The building became a National...

Jenny Sabin in conversation with Cooper Hewitt Senior Curator of Contemporary Design Ellen Lupton. Jenny E. Sabin’s work is at the forefront of a new direction for twenty-first-century architectural practice—one that investigates the intersections of architecture and science, and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures. Her experimental...

Liz Ogbu in conversation with Curator of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper Hewitt, Cynthia E. Smith. From designing shelters for immigrant day laborers in the United States to a water and health social enterprise for low-income Kenyans, Liz Ogbu has a long history of working with communities in need to leverage the power of design...

In the mid-twentieth century, German wallpaper company Rasch marketed wallpapers designed by noted contemporary artists to the American public. The product line was called the “International Artists Collection,” and appealed to consumers who wanted their homes and offices to reflect cutting edge of contemporary art. Explaining the creative motivation behind this partnership of artist and...

San Francisco is the city veiled in fog, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, known for its precipitous hills. Now, more often than not, the city is uttered in the same breath as Silicon Valley and skyrocketing rent prices. Those who have left their hearts in San Francisco at one time or another, may be astonished...

Live from El Teatro de El Museo del Barrio. Lively panel discussion on contemporary architecture. Leaders in the field, Diana Agrest of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects, Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos and Mónica Ponce de León of MPdL Studio, discuss urban development, private and public space, and environmental considerations with architect and moderator Warren James....