Design is about people, not things… Not just a catchphrase, it’s the key to Smart Design’s success. Over 90% of their designs have been brought to market, an impressive statistic for any industry. Their formula is simple: understanding the differing needs of people results in design that is truly universal. Cooper-Hewitt Members enjoyed a ‘fireside...
2010 National Design Award winners participate in a panel discussion about their inspiration and drive as designers and the state of contemporary design in America. Moderated by Stephen Doyle, Communication Design Winner. Speakers include:
Tom Dair, Smart Design, Product Design Winner
Stephen Kieran, KieranTimberlake, Architecture Design Winner
Ellen Neises, James Corner Field Operations, Landscape Design Winner
...
Jake Barton of Local Projects, National Design Award Finalist in 2010 and 2006, warmly welcomed Cooper-Hewitt Members for a behind-the-scenes look at his media-design firm. A great story teller himself, Jake spoke of the clever uses of information design, media production, interactivity, and social media to both solicit and tell stories. Local Projects was the...
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Cities for People, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He...
Over the next two weeks on the Cooper-Hewitt Design Blog, students from an interdisciplinary graduate-level course on the Triennial taught by the Triennial curatorial team blog their impressions and inspirations of the current exhibition,‘Why Design Now?’. This year the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial: Why Design Now? explores topics of sustainable design. Current...
New York City is widely considered an ecological nightmare—a wasteland of concrete and high-rises, diesel fumes and traffic jams, garbage and pollution. But, in the groundbreaking work of contrarian environmental thinking that is Green Metropolis, David Owen declares New York City as the greenest community in America. In Green Metropolis, David Owen conceives a new...
It’s hard to find examples of bad design that you can publish on a blog. I don’t suppose that’s surprising, as we all want to tell stories about our successes, but we’re happier when the failures fade into the gloom of obscurity. When you ask someone to name an example of bad design, the over-complex...
Design for the Other 90% opened in Washington, DC on April 28, 2010 at the National Geographic Museum’s 17th Street galleries, through September 6, 2010. Admission is free. Photo: Megan Seldon, National Geographic Society, 2010 Alan Parente (left) and Rich McWalters of the National Geographic Museum install the Solar Home Lighting System, one of the...
View from Central Park Yes, I’m starting to feel at home at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, having started work here this week. On the first day Angela Hall, who looks after everyone’s well being here, gave me a complete tour of the place. She introduced me to more than sixty people and showed me...
