Curator Ellen Lupton uses concrete examples to discuss how designed objects and environments affect human behavior. Through objects from the past and present, she demonstrates how good design can solve everyday problems.
This panel highlights the growing trend in design to create affordable and socially responsible objects for the vast majority of the world’s population (90%) not traditionally serviced by designers. Contributors to the exhibition Design for the Other 90% discuss the design and use of affordable and socially responsible objects. Be among the first to see...
A short video explaining youth participation in shaping Cooper-Hewitt's effort to make its vast collection web-accessible. NYC teens work with museum staff to select objects, tag them in their own words, and suggest features to make the virtual museum system more youth-friendly.
images from The IFF’s contributors’ galleries You’ve heard of open-source software. But what about open-source objects? The Los Angeles-based Institute For Figuring shares the instructions and principles behind their hyperbolic crochet technique right on their website. Like a team of data-hungry programmers, they invite people from all over the world to replicate the design, and...
First stop: Moorhead & Moorhead’s Design Miami/ tent exterior. The Cooper-Hewitt group was greeted by brothers, Robert (industrial designer) and Granger (architect), to talk about the dynamic canopied entrance to the design show – a bris soleil of hand cut, twisted vinyl strips that perform a dance of shadows on the ground. Taking a...
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?’. What does it mean to want everyone to have access to knowledge about everything businesses and government...
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?’. There is no shortage of practical objects in the 2010 Triennial. You will see everything from noble solutions for...
The final grand challenge posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian is explained by the sentence: “America is an increasingly diverse society that shares a history, ideals, and an indomitable, innovative spirit. We will use our resources across disciplines to explore what it means to be an American and...
On March 3, Cooper-Hewitt’s Members (Contributing level and above) joined the private opening of west elm’s newest location on the upper west side. Event designer extraordinaire David Stark created one-of-a-kind furniture and objects from recycled west elm packing materials and catalogs. Items were auctioned to benefit Cooper-Hewitt, and remain on display in the store throughout...
