About the Museum Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Calendar of Events Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Special Events Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Press
Exhibitions Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Collections Online Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Education Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Visit Cooper-Hewitt Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Join & Support Cooper-Hewitt Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum National Design Awards Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum The Shop at Cooper-Hewitt

Design Blog Design Blog

National Design Awards + Summer in NYC

If you happen to be in New York this summer (one day it will stop raining, I promise), be sure to check out these design destinations, all featuring previous National Design Award winners.

Recently opened at the Museum of F.I.T., the very beautifully installed retrospective of Toledo Studio’s designs includes The Dress (i.e., the lemongrass shift dress and jacket designed for Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day) and many other (often more compelling) explorations of the relationship between geometry and the body. Introduced with a fascinating timeline of the history of the studio and the symbiotic collaboration between Ruben and Isabel Toledo, the exhibition also includes the most iconic garments of Toledo’s career. Not least, the exhibition is worth a visit because of the relationship between the beautiful garments and the mannequins (designed by Ruben Toledo), reinforced through the datum of watercolors and sketches that contextualize the rich trajectory of garments on display. For those who can afford it, these will apparently all be available in the fall for purchase in lieu of the studio’s usual resort line.

Heading slightly downtown and west, arrive at the elevated park otherwise known as the High Line. While we might be best advised to avoid the subplots of pie-eyed developers trying to capitalize upon the still-moneyed classes of the far west side, there was a more than healthy crowd waiting to climb aboard on a suddenly sunny June weekend afternoon this past Sunday, and everyone in the park would seemingly agree that it was worth the wait. As the intern for the exhibition that features this project pointed out, even the water fountains were integrated as a design idea. Go now before the charge to keep it simple, wild, slow, and quiet become quaint aspirations.

Moving further east and slightly south, the about-to-be-completed new building for Cooper Union features the aggressively robust architecture of Morphosis and the deliberately distorted signage of Pentagram. Previewed in the New York Times last week as a “tough and sexy statement,” the building embraces its context while, somehow, seeming decidedly of its time. A bold move for a consistently radical institution that has been able to test boundaries and foster dialogue at the edge of disciplines in a 19th century building before now. There will likely be no doubt about when this new iteration was built (or commissioned), but the role of the public spaces within and the “vertical campus” promised by its atrium both propose a building that will radicalize the relationship between student and public while capturing the spirit of dialogue and collaboration that is endemic to the institution.

WANTED: Apple products for the National Design Museum's Collection

As the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum, Cooper-Hewitt seeks to acquire the best examples of industrial design, and much of the permanent collection has been built through the generosity of donors. The Museum would like to invite the public to help expand its holdings of products by Apple, one of the country’s most important and influential design firms.

We are looking for donations of the Apple products listed below. The products must be in excellent condition, with original parts and power cords or batteries. All donors will be listed on the credit line whenever the works are displayed or published. If you have one of the products below and would like to donate it, please contact Cynthia Trope, Associate Curator of Product Design and Decorative Arts, at tropeci@si.edu to discuss arrangements. Many thanks for your help!

Apple wish list:
iBook (2001, white)
iMac G5 (2004)
Macbook Pro (2006)
Macbook Air (2008)

“Green” Exhibition Design



Most people go to exhibitions to look at the objects. Eggheads go to read the labels. Design geeks (and museum professionals like myself) want to study the installation itself. How are the platforms and cases constructed? How are the texts laid out? How are supplementary graphics handled?

Cooper-Hewitt’s new exhibition Design for a Living World was designed by Pentagram. The design team sought to make the exhibition conform not only to fire codes, ADA guidelines, and museum conservation practices, but to make the installation sustainable as well. Here’s how they did it.

How are the photo panels printed?
The exhibition features dozens of original images by photojournalist Ami Vitale. The photos are printed on aluminum panels that magically reflect light. Museums usually print photographic enlargements on paper or vinyl and mount them to foamcore or Sintra (a hard plastic). These materials are not biodegradable, and they can’t be recycled or reused. Pentagram used a process called direct-to-substrate dye-sublimation printing: when the ink is heated and transferred to the material, the ink embeds into the surface of the metal. The resulting print is durable and scratch-resistant, and each panel can be recycled (like a soda can).




How were the overlapping panels designed?
Overlapping the panels adds dimensionality to the graphics. The technique makes reference to shingles, a vernacular building method used around the globe. Jeremy Hoffman, a graphic designer on the Pentagram team, created paper models of all the shingled wall montages in order to test and calculate the overlaps.

Is this process significantly more expensive than using Sintra?
Direct printing on aluminum is slightly more expensive than traditional techniques, but it may be less expensive in the long run. Printing directly to a rigid surface eliminates the use of adhesives and a paper or vinyl substrate. It’s an almost a flawless process, so you avoid rejecting panels that have imperfections resulting from all of the handwork that comes into play with mounting and trimming traditional output.




What material is used for the casework and scaffolds?
The exhibition is designed to travel. Instead of creating solid temporary walls, most of the wall structures are made with exposed wood studs, reducing the use of materials. The open scaffolds also reference informal building techniques seen in many parts of the world. The wall structures and the legs of the casework are made of FSC-certified Spanish Cedar harvested from Bolivia. The wood thus comes from forests that implement sustainable logging practices.




What else makes the exhibition sustainable?
The aluminum panels are made from 94% recycled aluminum, and the decks of the cases are made of Medite II, a medium-density fiberboard manufactured from 100% recycled or recovered wood fibers bonded with formaldehyde-free resin. (Cooper-Hewitt often uses this material.) The exhibition catalog was produced with sustainable materials as well; for more info, see Chul R. Kim, “Green” Publishing.”

Exhibition photographs by Paul Warchol and Brian Raby

Exhibition Design: Pentagram Design / Abbott Miller, Brian Raby, Jeremy Hoffman, Kristen Spilman
Exhibition Fabrication: Design and Production, Inc.
Graphic Production: Mega Media
Lighting: Jeff Nash Lighting Design

Felt at ICFF

Felt had a very strong presence at ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) this weekend.


1.

I was delighted to see that Lerival – Furniture by Architects is carrying Morehead & Morehead’s brilliant Felt Stool (1). This is currently produced in synthetic automotive felt, which is the only reason I didn’t include it in Fashioning Felt. Otherwise its simple folded form says, in brief, everything I love about felt.


2.

3.
A completely hand-made seating alternative was presented by the Los Angeles-based Mexican designer Tanya Aguiñiga, with her Soft Rocks furnishing pieces (2). Colorful wools are felted and wrapped around high-density foam. She also makes these great chairs of wool felted over found metal folding chairs (3).


4.

5.
Gräf & Lantz, known for an impressive array of wine-related felt accessories (4), are introducing a new line of home furnishings made from Swiss wool (5). In Switzerland, sheep are kept as diary producers, and their coarse wool, considered unsuitable for textiles, was formerly discarded. The wool is now gathered by a socially and environmentally-minded non-profit organization. The sheep, and the felt, come in two natural, un-dyed shades: creamy white and a rich brown, which comes from the rare “black” sheep, making this product available in strictly limited quantities.


6.
The sculptural wall panels by Anne Kyyrö Quinn grow more eye-catching each year. Made from cleverly cut, twisted, folded and stitches strips strips of wool felt, these visually dynamic wall treatments also provide acoustic benefits (6).


7.
ABR of Barcelona took a modular approach with their Feel-Thru room dividers (7). A series of water-jet cut felt panels suspended from a ceiling track and connected to one another with magnets can be pushed aside like a curtain, yet give a much more wall-like solidity. Available in black or white in two different cut-out patterns, the panels give the elegant play of light and shade of carved grille work, but with the softness, flexibility, and sound absorbing qualities of wool felt.


8.


9.
There were fewer felt carpets than in years past, but the Design Deutschland 09 booth showed this charming Stamp carpet by Hey-Sign (9). Peter Van Tuyl proposed a DIY carpet installation, designed by Rosemary Mifsud, which you compose yourself from a group of leafy felt forms (8).


10.
MIO showed their wonderfully green felt bowls and lamps, produced by a local Philadelphia-based hat-maker, one of the last in the US (10). Berin LLC, the US distributor for The Slice, by Lene Frantzen, had a particularly tempting display of those colorful favorites.


11.
Finally, if you are looking for a supplier of German-made, 100% wool felt, Boston-based FilzFelt carries a range of colors and thicknesses (11), along with a line of simple die-cut accessories for the home.

 

 

 

Design: Creativity in Service of Others

As a member of the 2009 National Design Awards Jury, let me first and foremost congratulate all of the winners and finalists. It was an exciting, exhausting, and inspiring process to review all the submissions and debate the merits and accomplishments of each. As a designer who has spent most of my career in the digital realm, I found it fascinating to delve into the categories that I am less familiar with as a practitioner: landscape architecture, fashion, and architecture. And my fellow jurors, each experts in their own fields, were so generous to the rest of us, sharing their insights into the peculiarities of their own discipline, and putting the many different portfolios into a larger context.

Let me make an admission: as a designer of software and products driven by technology, I have a bias towards functionality. Working at Google for a few years has certainly made that bias more pronounced. I enjoy intellectual design, and the kind of work that blurs the lines between art and design, but I also am fairly adamant that chairs should be comfortable to sit in; cups should have reasonably ergonomic handles; and shoes…well, I do love beautiful shoes, and in this realm I foolishly let go of my bias to favor style over comfort. But in most respects, and certainly in my work at Google and YouTube, I am a Bauhaus girl. So what philosophy is right? Does great design have to be functional? Is communicating an idea enough to make a product well designed?

There were certainly interesting exchanges about these timeless debates during our two days of deliberation: what distinguishes design from art? I’ve thought a lot about this since the jury convened, and I’ve come up with something I know to be true for myself. As a designer, my goal is to take my creative faculties, and those of my team, and use them in service of others. When I reflect on the impressive array of candidates for this year’s award winners and finalists, I was so inspired by the many ways these master practitioners have succeeded in improving the lives of people in so many ways. It could be through putting technology to work for humans, and not the other way around; creating spaces for living and working, both indoors and out, that bring out the best in ourselves and in each other; producing housewares that are a pleasure to hold and behold for decades; creating exquisite clothing that makes the wearer feel beautiful; taking complex issues of the day and helping us understanding them better through visual explanations; and finally, using design to prompt humankind to care for the fragile resources of our planet.

And what about beauty? The Shakers thankfully gave us the greatest lesson on how to marry design and art: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”

I am proud to count myself among the community of terminally curious, compulsive problem-solvers that make up the design world. And I look forward to watching new designers emerge in the years to come who will brazenly tackle the problems that, though we may not recognize today, will undoubtedly impact our future.

Margaret Gould Stewart
http://fountly.blogspot.com/
User Experience Manager, YouTube/Google
2009 National Design Awards Juror