Join Andrew Revkin, professor, author, and creator of the New York Times Dot Earth blog on climate change and sustainable living, to explore contemporary trends in collaborative communication and design and how they can be used to shape a sustainable human journey. How can nurturing the 'knowosphere' increase public awareness of an increasingly human-dominated planet...
Make a fist. Pound your hand. Chances are, this was how the paisley pattern started—according to Indian textile designer Umang Hutheesing, who happens to know a lot about the history of Indian textiles. On a recent visit to New York City, I asked Hutheesing for his opinion on the derivation of the paisley pattern. The...
The National Design Awards are bestowed at a gala benefit dinner and awards ceremony in New York City each fall. This year's festivities will be held at the spectacular Pier Sixty on the Hudson River on the evening of Wednesday, October 17. This year's vice-chairs are Beth Comstock, Aaron Dignan, Paul Herzan, Madeleine Rudin Johnson,...
“Yay! Yay! PICNIC! PICNIC! PICNIC!” was my immediate reaction. This was before learning that the name of this piece is Picnic Flatware! I can only imagine that anytime you use or even glance at this array of colorful characters that a picnic will automatically and instantaneously occur. It is happily unavoidable. These characters require neither a...
On October 16, 2012, leading innovators and thinkers in business and design were invited to Cooper-Hewitt's Business of Design Breakfast, an annual National Design Week event, for a discussion about creative ways each community can be inspired by the other. Bob Safian, publisher of Fast Company, moderated the conversation. Themes included how design can be...
On October 16, 2012, leading innovators and thinkers in business and design were invited to Cooper-Hewitt's Business of Design Breakfast, an annual National Design Week event, for a discussion about creative ways each community can be inspired by the other. Bob Safian, publisher of Fast Company, moderated the conversation. Themes included how design can be...
On October 16, 2012, leading innovators and thinkers in business and design were invited to Cooper-Hewitt's Business of Design Breakfast, an annual National Design Week event, for a discussion about creative ways each community can be inspired by the other. Bob Safian, publisher of Fast Company, moderated the conversation. Themes included how design can be...
Does capturing the malevolent and mysterious quality of Rodarte’s fashions in contract fabrics sound like the impossible brief? Then extra credit is due to this collaboration among former National Design Award winners Rodarte and Knoll. Since their debut in 2005, Rodarte’s collections have been singled out for their intensive, often destructive textile treatments, which have...
This cane looks like a normal, regular walking cane until you pull a map out of it! The idea and design of this secret cane is so simple and innovative, and those are the components of good design. I was instantly drawn toward the idea of how one could think to put a map in...
Red! Here I Am! Red-hot! In 2009, I first noticed this electric space heater prototype, designed in 1973 by Bill Moggridge, from across an exhibition gallery. The form immediately grabbed my attention with its startling—yet pleasing—tone of vibrant red. A departure from the black- or beige-box modernism of many industrial design objects of the period, this...
Richard Meier’s Getty Center, which sits atop a hill in Santa Monica, is, arguably, the last great building of the 20th century. While some liken the complex to a fortified Tuscan hill town, and Meier himself says that he was thinking of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli or the Villa Farnese in Caprarola, it reminds me of another ancient hilltop complex, the Parthenon.
Turning the pages of this 1939 Armstrong pattern catalog brings me back to when I first moved into my apartment. The floors in every room were covered in old-fashioned linoleum, with well-worn paths marking where people had walked over time. Of course, this all had to go, so I started tearing up the old linoleum...
Admirers of this exquisite tapestry fragment woven in medieval Spain fondly refer to it as “the Drinking Ladies”—an apt description for the two pairs of beautifully-robed women who lift their cups and bottle in salutation. The Drinking Ladies communicates the pleasures of female companionship amid the sumptuous environment of the wealthier classes. This was the...
For centuries, European rules of etiquette allowed a woman to receive gloves as a gift from men other than her husband. The practice was so widespread that novelty became an important consideration for the gift-giver when making his selection. Light-colored printed gloves enjoyed popularity with women in early 19th-century Europe, but this pair’s eye-catching design is particularly noteworthy for its unusual optic effect.
Art and Handicraft in the Women’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, edited by Maud Howe Elliot (1854-1948), noted author and daughter of anti-slavery activist Julia Ward Howe, consists of 30 articles by women on work and issues related to women as celebrated in the Women’s Building at the Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893....
