Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition 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.

Installed throughout the Andrew and Louise Carnegie Mansion, each floor of the exhibition is organized by themes that evoke experiences of home:

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

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

“Building Home” (third floor) presents 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 explore building typologies grounded in regional histories and cultural specificity, and address contemporary issues such as housing precarity, environmental advocacy, memory, and aging.

PARTICIPANTS

  • After Oceanic Built Environments Lab, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Leong Leong Architecture, New York City
  • Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Miami, Florida
  • La Vaughn Belle, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands 
  • Black Artists + Designers Guild, Brooklyn, New York
  • Lori A. Brown, Syracuse, New York; Trish Cafferky, Boston, Massachusetts; and Dr. Yashica Robinson, Huntsville, Alabama 
  • CFGNY, New York, New York
  • Mona Chalabi and SITU Research, Brooklyn, New York
  • Nicole Crowder, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Hadiya Williams, Washington, DC
  • Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, Oakland, California 
  • Heather Dewey-Hagborg, New York, New York
  • East Jordan Middle/High School, East Jordan, Michigan 
  • Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio, Washington, DC, and New York, New York
  • Hugh Hayden, Brooklyn, New York; Davóne Tines, New York, New York; and Zack Winokur, New York, New York
  • Hord Coplan Macht, Baltimore, Maryland
  • 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, New York, 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, Illinois
  • PIN–UP, New York, New York 
  • Ronald Rael, Oakland, California, and La Florida, Colorado 
  • William Scott, Oakland, California
  • Amie Siegel, Brooklyn, New York 
  • Renée Stout, Washington, DC

Exhibition Highlights

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. Buy now →​

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. 

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; Edward and Helen Hintz; re:arc institute; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

 

On View
Now through August 10, 2025
See the Exhibition
Purchase your ticket to the museum.

Past Events

Making Home with Data Lecture at The Cooper Union
Data journalist Mona Chalabi and representatives from the visual investigation practice SITU Research will discuss their installation "Patterns of Life" in the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Their work examines the impact of domicide—the destruction of civilian housing during military conflict—highlighting its profound effects on communities and international efforts to raise awareness of this pressing issue.
Event Date
November 19, 2024
Drop-In Sketching in the Galleries: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
Experience Cooper Hewitt’s collection and exhibitions through drawing! In this session, we'll sketch in the galleries of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, which explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition 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. This exhibition is full of visual imagery to spark the imagination for sketching! 
Event Date
March 19, 2025
Making Home Saturday Series: Systems Shaping Our Understanding of Home (Session 1)
In our next Making Home Saturday Series, join us to learn more about the systems shaping our understanding of home through a deeper look at two Triennial installations, Unruly Subjects by artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Carlos Soto and Contrast Form Gestalt by multidisciplinary collective CFGNY. Both projects probe ideas and ethics of institutional homes, like Cooper Hewitt, and their practices of acquiring and displaying objects from abroad.
Event Date
March 22, 2025
Making Home Saturday Series: Systems Shaping Our Understanding of Home (Session 2)
In our next Making Home Saturday Series, join us to learn more about the systems shaping our understanding of home through a deeper look at two Triennial installations, Unruly Subjects by artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Carlos Soto and Contrast Form Gestalt by multidisciplinary collective CFGNY. Both projects probe ideas and ethics of institutional homes, like Cooper Hewitt, and their practices of acquiring and displaying objects from abroad.
Event Date
March 22, 2025
DESIGN PRACTICE | NEEDLE FELTING WITH LIAM LEE
Build your design toolkit! Design Practice is a series of free, drop-in workshops for high school students exploring techniques, strategies, and careers in design. No prior experience required—just bring yourself and a creative mindset. This month, join us for a workshop with designer Liam Lee, whose work is featured in our current exhibition Making Home. Get inspired by Lee’s needle felting skills and learn how to create your very own needle-felted patch to add to a beanie. All materials are included! 
Event Date
December 12, 2024
Making Home Saturday Series: Cultivating Belonging and Reshaping an Understanding of Home (Session 2)
Session two of the inaugural Making Home Saturday Series features Chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians Brad KillsCrow, Maria Nicanor, Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Kevin Young, Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The session will explore the central role that community and organizational leaders play in reflecting a multiplicity of identities and concerns as a means of cultivating belonging and reshaping an understanding of home. The conversation will be moderated by architect, designer, and scholar Mabel O. Wilson.
Event Date
November 2, 2024
Making Home Saturday Series: Welcome Home, An Introduction from the Curators (Session 1)
In celebration of the opening of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, join Cooper Hewitt for session one of the inaugural Making Home Saturday Series program. Curators Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson will introduce the exhibition’s themes, participants, and development, and explore how the exhibition’s diverse contemporary perspectives and approaches to home across the United States, U.S. Territories, and Tribal Nations create a greater understanding of how design impacts this country, its value systems, and landscapes.
Event Date
November 2, 2024
Making Home with Justice Lecture at The Cooper Union
Deanna Van Buren, architect and founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, will discuss the installation "Architecture of Reentry" in the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is a design, architecture, and real-estate enterprise working to end mass incarceration and advocating for restorative justice solutions through the built environment. The “Architecture of Reentry” proposes Mobile Refuge Rooms as a prototype for private, customizable transitional housing for people returning from carceral spaces.
Event Date
January 28, 2025
CANCELLED: Curator Tour: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
Event Date
January 31, 2025
Drop-In Sketching in the Galleries: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
Experience Cooper Hewitt’s collection and exhibitions through drawing! In this session, we'll sketch in the galleries of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, which explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition 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. This exhibition is full of visual imagery to spark the imagination for sketching! 
Event Date
January 15, 2025
Making Home with History Lecture at The Cooper Union
For the third event in the lecture series, Making Home with History, multidisciplinary artist La Vaughn Belle and architect Germane Barnes will discuss cultural and environmental heritage in relation to their ongoing work and Triennial commissions. Both Belle and Barnes investigate Afro-diasporic social and historical narratives influencing contemporary art, architecture and design.
Event Date
February 20, 2025
CANCELLED: Curator Tour: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
Event Date
February 21, 2025
Curator Tour: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
Event Date
November 8, 2024
CANCELED: Curator Tour: Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial
In this curator-guided tour of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, visitors will explore some of the exhibition’s 25 original commissions, highlighting design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional experiences of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established...
Event Date
November 29, 2024