James Carpenter Design Associates opened their studio doors to Cooper-Hewitt Members on October 6. Members were captivated by the ‘show and tell’ of prismatic effects of transmitted and reflected light. JCDA seeks to bring light into our lives in a way we recognize, translating its abundance or rareness, and always its richness. Masters of...
New York City is widely considered an ecological nightmare—a wasteland of concrete and high-rises, diesel fumes and traffic jams, garbage and pollution. But, in the groundbreaking work of contrarian environmental thinking that is Green Metropolis, David Owen declares New York City as the greenest community in America. In Green Metropolis, David Owen conceives a new...
Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig of Pentagram talk about designing the catalog for the National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? A partner at Pentagram, a critic at Yale and a co-founder of Design Observer, Michael is one of the world's most admired graphic designers. We at Cooper-Hewitt were thrilled with the design that he created...
This is the second of the grand challenges posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian, with the explanatory sentence: “We will use our resources across scientific museums and centers to significantly advance our knowledge and understanding of life on earth, respond to the growing threat of environmental change, and...
Why? Vertical farming is a new approach to fresh-food distribution that provides urban centers with healthy food grown within the controlled environment of a multistory building. Eco-Laboratory successfully merges a neighborhood market, dwelling units, a vocational training facility, and a sustainability educational center for the public into a financially viable downtown residential development.
On May 14, 2009, Cooper-Hewitt opens Design for a Living World, an exhibition developed by The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s leading conservation organizations. As part of our partnership with TNC, Cooper-Hewitt met the challenge of publishing a companion book that would emphasize the exhibition’s principal themes: sustainable design and materials, and responsible conservation...
