How can we power the world with clean energy? How can we improve the quality of life through health-care innovations? Design has emerged as a powerful tool to help businesses offer ingenious and often disruptive solutions to the world's most complex problems. Join us as leading thinkers, scientists and designers share their expertise and discuss...

Business leaders discuss how design impacts their overall strategy and affects their bottom line. Bob Safian, Publisher of Fast Company moderates a panel that investigates companies choices that are making clear impact on sustainability issues and their businesses. Panelists include: 
S. Richard Fedrizzi, CEO, United States Green Building Council
Chris Hacker, Chief Design Officer, Johnson &...

The 2010 People's Design Award goes to the Braille Alphabet Bracelet by At First Sight Braille Jewelry. The design of this bracelet combines beautiful jewelry design and the braille alphabet to help spread the need for Braille literacy. Unemployment among individuals who are blind hovers at about 70%, but of those individuals who are employed...

See Stephen Colbert present the 2010 National Design Award for Communication to graphic designer Stephen Doyle. The Award for Communication Design recognizes the impact of design on the ways that we look, read, and think. Stephen Doyle gives words a deeper meaning in graphic form, resulting in an intelligent, provocative body of work. His clients...

Jane and Benjamin Thompson, FAIA, collaborated for two decades on Design Research, the postwar emporium that introduced advanced designs from abroad. The book Design Research: The Store that Brought Modern Living to American Homes, by Jane Thompson and Alexandra Lange chronicles the renowned "General Store of Good Design," and reveals the backstory of the store...

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...

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...

Speaking to K-12 Educators from New York and across the country, Bill Moggridge addresses the question of 'What is Design?'. This is the keynote lecture for the Smithsonian Design Institute. http://cooperhewitt.org/EDU/community_programs.asp  

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...

The final grand challenge posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian is explained by the sentence: “America is an increasingly diverse society that shares a history, ideals, and an indomitable, innovative spirit. We will use our resources across disciplines to explore what it means to be an American and...

The third of the grand challenges posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian is explained by the sentence: “As a steward and ambassador of cultural connections, with a presence in some 100 countries and expertise and collections that encompass the globe, we will build bridges of mutual respect, and...

This is the second of the grand challenges posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian, with the explanatory sentence: “We will use our resources across scientific museums and centers to significantly advance our knowledge and understanding of life on earth, respond to the growing threat of environmental change, and...

A picnic in the park as a starting point. This is the first of the grand challenges posed by Secretary Wayne Clough for the new strategic plan of the Smithsonian. Here’s the explanatory sentence: “We will continue to lead the quest to understand the fundamental nature of the cosmos, using next-generation technologies to explore our...

Here’s some impressive trivia: Q – How many Museums are there in the Smithsonian? A – 19, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Q – How many objects in the collections? A – 137,000,000. Q – How many visitors last year? A – 30,000,000. Q – How many website visits? A – 188,000,000. Yes, those...