National Design Triennial

• By: Ellen Lupton
• | Tuesday May 6, 2008
• | 2 Comment(s)

Cooper-Hewitt invites you to submit ideas for our fourth Triennial exhibition, opening in 2010. We are looking for designers, firms, and projects from around the world that answer the question “Why design now?” Why is design an essential tool for solving some of today’s most urgent problems? What draws creative thinkers, makers, and problem solvers to this crucial field of discovery? Why should business leaders, policy makers, consumers, and citizens embrace design values?

Today’s designers are addressing human and environmental problems with renewed vigor. This social turn is the single most important trend connecting the many fields of contemporary design practice, from architecture and products to fashion, graphics, new media, and landscapes. Designers are confronting issues of sustainability, accessibility, universality, fair trade, conservation, health, education, creative capitalism, and underserved audiences. They are creating systems, services, and social networks as well as physical products that seek to communicate, innovate, and inform. These designers are enhancing human experience by inventing solutions that are as beautiful as they are just.

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will launch its first global design Triennial, the fourth in a series of ambitious exhibitions surveying key developments across the design disciplines. Please share your nominations with the exhibition’s curators, Cara McCarty, Matilda McQuaid, Cynthia E. Smith, and Ellen Lupton, who are looking for the best ideas coming from around the world.

Submit your ideas for our fourth Triennial exhibition here.