Michael Bierut, this year’s winner of the Design Mind award, discusses the state of contemporary design with our National Design Awards winners: Tom Kundig, FAIA; Scott Stowell (OPEN); Ralph Rucci; Lucinda Sanders (OLIN); and Charles Harrison.

Curator Ellen Lupton uses concrete examples to discuss how designed objects and environments affect human behavior. Through objects from the past and present, she demonstrates how good design can solve everyday problems.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an eighteenth-century designer of architecture, elaborate Interiors and exquisite furnishings, boldly combined historical elements to create innovative designs that still resonate today. Cooper-Hewitt invites a panel of designers to discuss how, like Piranesi, their imaginative and often irreverent use of historical motifs invigorates contemporary design. This panel features: Anna Sui, Fashion Designer;...

Join Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum for a presentation and discussion on teaching graphic design with Ellen Lupton, Curator of Contemporary Design, graphic designer, educator, and author of several books on design including D.I.Y.: Design it Yourself, and D.I.Y. Kids. The presentation will offer strategies for explaining and teaching graphic design principles and ways to move...

Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne, authors of Readymade: How to Make (Almost) Everything: A Do-It-Yourself Primer and Ellen Lupton, author of D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself lead a day-long celebration of “DIY” design, showing participants how to translate everyday materials into exciting new objects.