Design triennial showcases latest in architecture

Art Business News, June, 2003

A celebration of the technological innovations, artistic evolution and cultural impact of design during the last three years is currently on view at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in the second "National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now." More than 300 objects, models, photographs, films and renderings are featured.

The exhibition explores new ideas and the future of design organized in six areas of focus, including "Domestic Interiors Redefined," "Mobility and Transportation," "Beauty and Ornament," "Craft, Authenticity and Entrepreneurial Production," "Function and Technology" and "New Kinds of Science."

In "Domestic Interiors Redefined," highlights include work from designers David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco of "The Royal Tenenbaums" fame, who have furnished interiors with new objects, patterns and surfaces.

"Mobility and Transportation" features designers Viktor Jondal and Jennifer Siegal, among others, who address the needs of modern mobile populations with interior spaces that can be portable and temporary. By showing vehicles and devices, the exhibit demonstrates the need for new technologies that help us travel through public and private spaces in an increasingly global society.

Many works selected for exhibition reveal the designers' interest in beauty and decoration through the use of new technologies, pop culture imagery and fresh approaches to scale, color and construction. This aspect of the exhibition pays homage to fashion and graphic design as well as to decorative design.

The exhibit also explores how designers double as producers, working to initiate ideas and make them concrete. Co-curator Ellen Lupton said, "Some of the most interesting designers working today are producing and distributing their own products, garments, textiles, typefaces, magazines, novels, music, films and videos." For example, milliner Kelly Christy designs and fabricates her own hats, Jim Zivic of Burning Relic constructs his own furniture and best-selling author Dave Eggers used his computer skills to publish a journal he founded.

"Function and Technology" is another area of design explored in the exhibit, which shows how designers have sought to use appropriate materials and structures to solve basic problems of daily life, including technologically enhanced shoes and the scientific marvel, the plastic heart.

Science and design also are brought together with interactive robots and large-scale computer graphics.

Eighty designers and firms contributed to the exhibition, including Escher + GuneWardena, Tess Giberson, Daniel and Christopher Streng, Peter Eisenman, Gaetano Pesce, Paula Scher, Jennifer Tipton and Isabel Toledo.

SHOW FACTS

"National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now"

Through Aug. 3

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Address: 2 East 91st St. New York, N.Y.

Phone: (212) 849-8400

Web site: www.si.edu/ndm