The 2010 Product Design award goes to Smart Design. Founded in 1980, Smart Design is led by Davin Stowell and Tom Dair. They are a multidisciplinary design consultancy, responsible for designing the OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, the SmartGauge instrument cluster for the Ford Fusion Hybrid, New York City taxi graphics, and medical devices for...
Since taking the company helm in 1970, Alberto Alessi, President and Director of Marketing Strategies and Design Management, has continually striven to work at the heart of international creative culture, treating the company as a "research lab in the Applied Arts". Aided by Alberto's entrepreneurial flair, Alessi successfully continues to explore and research the most...
We all enjoyed the opening of Alessi: Ethical and Radical this past weekend at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (on view through April 10, 2011 in the Collab Gallery/Perelman Building), and last night Alberto joined us at Cooper-Hewitt for a scintillating presentation of the company’s work over the decades, reiterating the Alessi ethos that Design...
We’re thrilled that Alberto Alessi will be giving a presentation at the Museum on Monday (22nd) evening! He is the ultimate mediator between designs that can succeed commercially as well as expressing artistic values. What’s more he is an engaging presenter with an impish sense of humor. I was at the opening of...
This week and next, Cooper-Hewitt is offering extraordinary design programs hosted by Bill Moggridge. The first is this Thursday evening and will feature Professor Shinichi Takemura’s incredible interactive multimedia presentation “Tangible Earth,” which is followed next Monday by a conversation with Italian design maestro Alberto Alessi. Tangible Earth For the first time...
Cooper-Hewitt Members enjoyed a private tour of the International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show with Sarah Coffin, Curator of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Decorative Arts and Head of Product Design and Decorative Arts. Highlights of the tour included MALLET, Primavera Gallery, Lillian Nassau, Jason Jacques Gallery, H. Blairman & Sons, James Robinson, Apler-Fredericks, Hancocks &...
Washington DC teens gathered at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery to learn about education and careers in design from the National Design Awards winners, finalists and jurors. These professionals are working in the fields of fashion, industrial design, architecture, multimedia, and graphic design. Tim Gunn and Cooper-Hewitt's Director of Education Caroline Payson lead...
Ted Muehling Expounds Ted hosted a group of Cooper-Hewitt members at his studio and store in SoHo this week, as you can see from the Monday at Muehling’s post, giving them a peek at his wonderfully creative environment full of glass, emotive sculpture and creatures from the natural world. He is also the guest curator...
Subway car interior I lived in New York for a few months in 1965, when people were afraid to stand on a station platform alone, or board a train without protection from friends, and there was a police officer in every car. What a contrast from this week, when I rode the Lexington Avenue Express...
