This post was originally published on April 1, 2013. Between 1909 and 1948, the Grand Palais near the Champs-Elysées in Paris featured remarkable decorative interiors which housed automotive, aeronautical and many other types of trade shows. For the buildings and other structures of the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, decorative lighting helped create a unity...
In last month’s Cooper Hewitt Short Story, the exuberant personality of Robert Winthrop Chanler unfolded in a large gift of illustrated books to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library. May’s Short Story celebrates the curatorial vision that brought a professional edge to the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, that of Calvin Hathaway. Margery...
In 1977, in honor of the bicentennial celebrations of a year previous, Cooper Hewitt mounted an exhibition entitled 200 Years of American Architectural Drawing (see more on the exhibition in a special feature on the Architectural League’s website). Curated by David Gebhard and Deborah Nevins, the show and its accompanying publication featured a range of...
The SketchBot interface is composed of a series of 21st-century tools, including a digital camera, computer software, and a robot. But it also makes use of a natural material older than mankind itself: sand. The sand is incorporated into a multistep process that results in a portrait that can be wiped away to make way...
How can you make a hearing aid both elegant and functional at the same time? Stuart Karten Design introduced the Zon as a way to combat the stigma that is usually associated with the traditional beige shrimp-shaped hearing aids. Often associated with age, weakness or even disability, many individuals with hearing impairments wait as long...
The Flex-Foot Cheetah incorporates untraditional materials to solve a design problem that had vexed the medical field for years: finding a prosthetic solution that allows the user to live a normal, active lifestyle. Van Phillips lost his leg below the knee at the age of 21. Unsatisfied with the prosthetics then available to him, he...
Toolboxes come in all shapes and sizes. They offer a resting place for the mechanic’s hand tools and a protective environment for the chef’s knives. Yet such toolboxes serve a select audience. In the 21st-century, the computer is the universal toolbox, used by billions of people across the globe. Early computers, including Bill Moggridge’s influential GRiD Compass...
“Escape and Evasion” maps were given to airmen during World War II to avoid capture behind enemy lines. Such maps were one of many in the military man’s arsenal, but in some respects this navigational tool represents one of the most significant products of war-era ingenuity. This Pacific Ocean “drift map,” scaled at 1:4,000,000, illustrates...
From the archives, an Object of the Day blog post on the Polaroid SX-70,. The 1972 point-and-shoot camera revolutionized instant photography. Now on view in Bob Greenberg Selects.
On the outside, little about the 122-year-old Swiss Army knife has changed. But on the inside, the Victorinox@work has been updated with the 21st-century user in mind, performing not only utilitarian cutting tasks but also serving as a USB digital storage device. The diminutive tool, wrapped in its signature red case, redefines work for a...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do at Cooper-Hewitt? I manage the exhibition design process for all our exhibitions, including the designers who design our exhibitions, graphics, and lighting, and plan the schedules and budgets for how the exhibitions are built. What was your background before coming to Cooper-Hewitt?...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do here at Cooper-Hewitt? As Curatorial Director, my primary responsibility is overseeing the Museum's collections and helping to shape the exhibition program. Major initiatives at the Museum are done collectively, with each division playing a role in decisions. One of the most visible...
Tableware as Sensorial Stimuli. (Image credit: Jinhyun Jeon, http://jjhyun.com/?portfolio=tableware-as-sensorial-stimuli-2) Over the past few months, a number of design and food trends have been catching my attention. One is the idea of slowing down, inherent in the work of many student design projects I’ve recently seen. Afterall, what can (hopefully) inspire us to slow down more...
Biccio fillet, part of the Faked Meat series by Marije Vogelzang on view at the Food Culture exhibition. Design and food continues to be an area of design practice garnering attention as it pushes at the boundaries of what we think of as traditional design. (Full discloser, I am organizing an exhibition on the subject.) Case...
M25 Luncheon. (Image credit: The Back Room by Faye Toogood.) The London Design Festival has since passed (it was held September 14 – 23, 2012), but one trend has held my attention: the design and food pop-up. This is by no means a new phenomenon at international contemporary design festivals, but it continues to be...
