Cooper Hewitt's mount maker discusses the challenges of displaying an object with a complex surface structure.

Neri Oxman's 3D-printed GLASS series may contain answers for the future of the medium and its use.

This 3D-printed artificial limb prototype represents the use of innovative digital manufacturing technology to meet the enduring need for prosthetics, which has been experienced by individuals around the world and at all economic levels. This technology requires no medical specialists, only access to a tablet-based application and an easy-to-use scanner. This is of particular relevance to the...

This week’s posts feature case studies from Cooper Hewitt’s Digital Collections Management Project, a conservation survey of born-digital and hybrid objects in the permanent collection. The two-year project was coordinated by an in-house team of conservators, curators, and registrar, and was conducted by digital conservation specialist Cass Fino-Radin and his team at Small Data Industries....

To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. For more than 20 years, Michael Eden has been a professional potter, often working in a traditional slipware technique. In 2006, he enrolled in a...

In celebration of the museum’s inaugural Cooper Hewitt Lab: Design Access taking place in the Barbara and Morton Mandel Design Gallery through February 15, we are highlighting innovative accessible design from the permanent collection. Designed to help prevent further curvature of the spine, UNYQ Align is an elegant and fashionable scoliosis brace that combines digital...

Can a children’s toy function as a subversive agent of anti-capitalism? Possibly. The Free Universal Construction Kit is a set of design plans for nearly 80 two-way adapters capable of joining together individual parts from ten popular brands of construction toys, allowing for interoperability between otherwise incompatible construction toy parts.[1] Available for download at no...

This chair is included in the exhibition Joris Laarman Lab: Design in the Digital Age, on view at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum through January 15, 2018. This Pixel chair (prototype) is part of a series of twelve unique Makerchairs designed by Joris Laarman and fabricated by Joris Laarman Lab. To make the bending grid...

Using design objects from the current exhibition Energizing the Everyday: Gifts from the George R. Kravis II Collection and works from Cooper Hewitt’s collection, Curatorial Director Cara McCarty examines how scientific inquiry, technology, and our persistent fascination with manipulating materials—from plastics and aluminum to silicon chips and LCDs—have impacted modern industrial design, as well as...