City of Neighborhoods is an innovative experience about the design process, learning from professionals to understand how design can affect and improve your community. This 11-session workshop offers youth participants the opportunity to incorporate the latest technologies which includes iPads, Macbooks, and FlipVideos. Youth participants use these tools to capture and display their work via...

The design process has progressed from just forming objects to addressing the situations in which objects are used. This is a major theme in Ralph Caplan's seminal book By Design, expressed in the book's subtitle: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors of the Hotel Louis IV and Other Object Lessons. This year,...

Ellen Lupton has been Cooper-Hewitt's curator of contemporary design since 1992. Her new book, Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (St. Martins Press, May 2009), is co-authored with her twin sister Julia. Design Your Life takes an irreverent and realistic look at everything from toasters, bras, and pillows to housekeeping and...