Excitement lurked not too far behind their sleepy demeanors as this year’s Junior and Senior Scholars students embarked on a weekend of college touring starting at 7am Friday, April 8. Our first stop included a visit to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A meeting with Scot Osterweil, Director of the Education Arcade at the MIT Media...
Over the next two weeks on the Cooper-Hewitt Design Blog, students from an interdisciplinary graduate-level course on the Triennial taught by the Triennial curatorial team blog their impressions and inspirations of the current exhibition,‘Why Design Now?’. Just what, exactly, is MIT’s CityCar? It is a car, yes, and a tiny one at that. It looks...
Why? Preindustrial construction methods can provide fundamental lessons about sustainable design and environmental impact today. In this site-specific installation, thin tile vaults stretching across large spaces without formwork is part of a 700-year-old construction method that is energy-efficient, utilizes local materials, and achieves high structural strength. All of these factors have important applications in the...
Why? Mobility on-demand and shared use are alternatives to private car ownership, and CityCar is a concept vehicle that combines the two. This two-passenger electric car can be made available from a network of urban parking zones, where users swipe a card and take the first fully charged vehicle. It provides a non-polluting, noise-free, energy-efficient,...
Follow my field research chronicles on twitter, starting in Kumasi, Ghana at the International Development Design Summit organized by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and MIT. The summit aims to create equity in the distribution of research and development resources by focusing on the needs of the world’s poor, bringing together students,...
A multitude of schools are at the forefront of devising low cost innovations around the world, these are only a few of the examples of initiatives and projects underway. Designmatters at Art Center College of Design develops a multi-component design solution for a mobile clinic in Kenya. A camel-packaging system improves efficiency, refrigeration units are...
