This fall, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial.” Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, the exhibition explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the U.S., U.S. territories and tribal nations. On view Nov. 2 through summer 2025, “Making Home” is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design. “Making Home” is the first in the Triennial series to be presented in collaboration with another Smithsonian museum, in this case the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“The Design Triennial series has a long history of looking critically at issues impacting contemporary public life,” said Maria Nicanor, director of Cooper Hewitt. “By addressing topics of civic relevance in multifaceted ways—from the scale of the object and materiality to larger built and social systems—past and future Triennials take the temperature of the times by placing contemporary creators, designers and thinkers at the center of timely conversations. For this seventh iteration opening this fall, the topic of home, understood as a sense of belonging, was central to each of the installations. All of them gesture towards a greater understanding of how we are living in this nation and how design plays an active role in this shared experience.”

Installed throughout the Andrew and Louise Carnegie Mansion, each floor of the exhibition will be organized by themes that evoke experiences of home—“Going Home” (ground floor and first floor), “Seeking Home” (second floor) and “Building Home” (third floor).

“Going Home” will consider how people shape and are shaped by domestic spaces. Through reinterpretations of diverse home environments that traverse interior and exterior spaces, this section will explore the historical and personal factors that influence home design and its profound impact on people’s experiences, behaviors and values.

“Seeking Home” will address a range of institutional, experimental and utopian contexts that challenge conventional definitions of home. Installations will examine the idea of home through the lenses of cultural heritage, the human body, imagined landscapes and refuge.

“Building Home” will present alternatives to single-family construction models, expanding and redefining home to embrace community space, cooperative living, land stewardship, decolonial practices and historic preservation. Large-scale installations will explore building typologies grounded in regional histories and cultural specificity, and address contemporary issues such as housing precarity, environmental advocacy, memory and aging.

PARTICIPANTS

The commissioned participants were selected over a two-year period and represent a culturally diverse roster of designers, architects, artists and their collaborators from across the nation.

The Design Triennial participants are:

After Oceanic Built Environments Lab, Honolulu, and Leong Leong, New York City
Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Miami
La Vaughn Belle, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Black Artists + Designers Guild, Brooklyn, New York
Lori A. Brown, Syracuse, New York; Trish Cafferky, Boston; and Dr. Yashica Robinson, Huntsville, Alabama
CFGNY, New York City
Mona Chalabi and SITU Research, Brooklyn, New York
Nicole Crowder, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Hadiya Williams, Washington, D.C.
Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, Oakland, California
Heather Dewey-Hagborg, New York City
East Jordan Middle/High School, East Jordan, Michigan
Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio, Washington, D.C., and New York City
Hugh Hayden, Brooklyn, New York; Davóne Tines, New York City; and Zack Winokur, New York City
Hord Coplan Macht, Baltimore
Terrol Dew Johnson, Tohono O’odham Nation, Sells, Arizona, and Aranda\Lasch, Tucson, Arizona, and Brooklyn, New York
Liam Lee, Brooklyn, New York, and Tommy Mishima, Bronx, New York
Lenape Center with Joe Baker, Delaware Tribe of Indians, New York City and Oklahoma
Joiri Minaya, Brooklyn, New York
Sofía Gallisá Muriente, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Carlos Soto, Bronx, New York
Robert Earl Paige, Chicago
PIN–UP, New York City
Ronald Rael, Oakland, California, and La Florida, Colorado
William Scott, Oakland, California
Amie Siegel, Brooklyn, New York
Renée Stout, Washington, D.C.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The exhibition is organized by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Cooper Hewitt’s curator of contemporary design and Hintz Secretarial Scholar; Christina L. De León, Cooper Hewitt’s acting deputy director of curatorial and associate curator of Latino design; and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator of architecture and design at the National Museum of African American History and Culture; with curatorial assistants Sophia Gebara, Caroline O’Connell, Julie Pastor and Isabel Strauss.

Exhibition design by Los Angeles–based Johnston Marklee. Graphic design by New York City–based Office Ben Ganz.

PUBLICATION

The accompanying publication, Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, co-published with MIT Press, will feature scholarly essays together with first-person home stories, photo essays and conversations. All Design Triennial participants will contribute to the book alongside writers and critical thinkers who represent the expansive geographies, communities and legacies included in the exhibition. Available in February 2025, the publication will be designed by Sunny Park of Park-Langer, based in Los Angeles.

SUPPORT

“Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum; the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino; the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Generous support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Support is also provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

ABOUT COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM

Cooper Hewitt is America’s design museum. Inclusive, innovative and experimental, the museum’s dynamic exhibitions, education programs, master’s program, publications and online resources inspire, educate and empower people through design. An integral part of the Smithsonian Institution—the world’s largest museum, education and research complex—Cooper Hewitt is located on New York City’s Museum Mile in the landmarked Carnegie Mansion. Steward of one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive design collections—over 215,000 objects that range from an ancient Egyptian faience cup dating to about 1100 BC to contemporary 3D-printed objects and digital code—Cooper Hewitt welcomes everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world.

For more information, visit www.cooperhewitt.org or follow @cooperhewitt on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Since opening Sept. 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed 11 million in-person visitors and millions more through its digital presence. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000-square-foot museum is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. The museum has also launched and is continually expanding its reach with the Searchable Museum portal and other efforts to bring African American history into the world’s hands and homes. For more information about the museum, visit nmaahc.si.edu follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

Cooper Hewitt Announces “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial”