In 2013, architectural designer Deanna Van Buren and social scientist Barb Toews established Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (DJ+DS) to facilitate the design of more restorative and healing criminal-justice environments through community engagement in jails and prisons. Their work is featured in the exhibition By the People: Designing a Better America, curated by Cynthia Smith, Curator of...

In the late 1990s, the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) in Tacoma, Washington announced its plan to relocate from the bank building that it had occupied since 1935 to a new site on the waterfront with views of Mt. Rainier.  National Design Award-winning architect Antoine Predock was selected to design a building that more than doubled...

Cynthia Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design speaks with architects Rosanne Haggerty and David Baker about community building through innovative affordable housing design.

Louis Sullivan’s ornament can be appreciated on both a large scale—think Chicago’s Carson Pirie Scott building—and a small one—this cast iron doorplate. Having been removed from its original location during the mid-twentieth century, this doorplate is from Adler & Sullivan’s last commission, the Guaranty Building (now called the Prudential Building). The building became a National...

Jenny Sabin in conversation with Cooper Hewitt Senior Curator of Contemporary Design Ellen Lupton. Jenny E. Sabin’s work is at the forefront of a new direction for twenty-first-century architectural practice—one that investigates the intersections of architecture and science, and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures. Her experimental...

Liz Ogbu in conversation with Curator of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper Hewitt, Cynthia E. Smith. From designing shelters for immigrant day laborers in the United States to a water and health social enterprise for low-income Kenyans, Liz Ogbu has a long history of working with communities in need to leverage the power of design...

In the mid-twentieth century, German wallpaper company Rasch marketed wallpapers designed by noted contemporary artists to the American public. The product line was called the “International Artists Collection,” and appealed to consumers who wanted their homes and offices to reflect cutting edge of contemporary art. Explaining the creative motivation behind this partnership of artist and...

San Francisco is the city veiled in fog, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, known for its precipitous hills. Now, more often than not, the city is uttered in the same breath as Silicon Valley and skyrocketing rent prices. Those who have left their hearts in San Francisco at one time or another, may be astonished...

Live from El Teatro de El Museo del Barrio. Lively panel discussion on contemporary architecture. Leaders in the field, Diana Agrest of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects, Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos and Mónica Ponce de León of MPdL Studio, discuss urban development, private and public space, and environmental considerations with architect and moderator Warren James....

Little is known about American architect Christian Francis Rosborg other than a few projects and drawings attributed to his name that rest in Cooper Hewitt’s collection. Trained early on under the mentorship of New York-based architects Ernest Flagg and Haydel & Shepard, the obscure figure was part of the early twentieth-century stylistic transition from French-influenced...

Recorded live on February 4, 2016 at Cooper Hewitt. David Adjaye OBE is an architect and designer known for combining the aesthetics of his African heritage with classic, modernist design. His studio, Adjaye Associates, has established projects on four continents, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open...

During the second World War, the French city of Le Havre was severely bombed. August Perret, a pioneering French modernist architect, was tasked with rebuilding the city. Perret’s reconstruction is considered exceptional for its seamless integration of the city’s extant historic structures with modern concrete construction and design innovations. Perret’s new buildings for Le Havre...

Why does this trompe l’oeil architectural model that is also a bird house have anything to do with night clubs? It was a wonderful present to Bobby Short in honor of his many years crooning at the Café Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel. It combines the artistic talent of Richard Haas, an unknown model maker,...

Step Up on Fifth, located in the heart of downtown Santa Monica, is a five-story affordable housing complex built to offer support services and rehabilitation for the local homeless and mentally disabled population. Completed in 2009 by Los Angeles-based architecture firm Brooks + Scarpa, the building, a former parking structure, integrates 46 studio apartments with...

Santiago Calatrava’s work explores the significance of place and its human context by considering both topographical and cultural landscapes. In this sense, Calatrava believes that it is fundamental to form a relationship – a feeling and sense of spirituality – with a physical site. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on...