Director’s Talks: Maria Nicanor in Conversation with Mattaforma, 2026 National Design Award Winner, Emerging Designer
Join Cooper Hewitt for a talk with Emerging Designer winner Mattaforma—the latest program in a new series spotlighting the 2026 National Design Award winners in conversation with Director Maria Nicanor.
Mattaforma is a New York–based architecture and research studio founded by Lindsey Wikstrom that is redefining sustainable design through mass-timber innovation and healthy materials. Through writing, teaching, and advocacy, the studio invites policymakers, schoolchildren, and neighbors to co-author plant-based futures where climate action is tangible, communal, and joyful.
About the Series
In this monthly series, Maria Nicanor, Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, sits down with the 2026 National Design Award winners for one‑on‑one conversations at the museum. Spanning design disciplines and the ten award categories, each talk offers an inside look at the innovation, practice, and vision behind the work of this year’s winners.
The National Design Awards is a Cooper Hewitt initiative launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council. The awards and its associated public programs seek to increase national awareness of the impact of design in our everyday life.
SPEAKERS
Lindsey Wikstrom is the founder of Mattaforma, a New York–based architecture and research studio redefining sustainable design through mass-timber innovation and healthy materials. Every Mattaforma project begins with field research: locating nearby forests, quarries, and farms, and drawing from their material networks, histories, and knowledge. The studio’s restorative approach creates classrooms, homes, and community venues designed for disassembly and reuse, ensuring flexibility and resilience. Projects often cross disciplines, from timber pavilions built in forty-eight hours to open-air classrooms and structures that serve as music venues in the summer and become plant nurseries in the winter. Through writing, teaching, and advocacy, Mattaforma invites policymakers, schoolchildren, and neighbors to co-author plant-based futures where climate action is tangible, communal, and joyful.
Maria Nicanor is an architecture and design curator and historian. She is passionate about public access to culture and rethinking the traditional roles of museums by experimenting with new storytelling formats that connect cultural institutions with civic life. Before joining Cooper Hewitt as its director, Nicanor was the executive director of Rice Design Alliance at the Rice University School of Architecture, director of the Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid, and a curator at the Design, Architecture, and Digital Department of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Before that, Nicanor spent almost a decade as a curator working on exhibitions and architecture initiatives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Accessibility & What to Expect:
- Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience.
- About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s Carnegie Library on the First floor of the museum. It is fully wheelchair accessible. There is an accessible restroom on the Ground floor. Read more about accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
- Accommodations: The program will have live CART captioning. If we can provide additional services to support your participation, email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.
SUPPORT
The 2026 Smithsonian National Design Awards and Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection received generous support from:
LISA ROBERTS AND DAVID SELTZER
JON AND SHIGEMI IWATA
AMITA AND PURNENDU CHATTERJEE
ALEXANDRA & PAUL HERZAN
TARGET
TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART
ARTHUR F. AND ALICE E. ADAMS FOUNDATION
HENRY R. MUÑOZ III
IRENE AU AND BRADLEY HOROWITZ
CHRIS AND IRMA FRALIC
KIM AND AL EIBER
MARGARET GOULD STEWART AND DAVID STEWART
STEVE MILLER
KIMBERLY SCHUESSLER
VICTOR CALISE
ALAN DYE
SHELBY GANS
HELEN HINTZ
PAUL LEINWAND
JOHN MAEDA
NATALIE NIXON
KAREN PHILLIPS
KEITH YAMASHITA
