Everything old is new again: many works in the Cooper-Hewitt's current survey of contemporary American design advance concepts in their respective fields by mining the past - Design

Stephanie Cash

The second Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial has a decidedly different feel than the first. Compared to works in the inaugural exhibition, which were more "blobular" and sleek, those in the museum's current roundup of recent American design have a funky, homemade quality. Many of the works reuse design motifs or materials from earlier periods, giving the show an overall nostalgic quality, but in a decidedly fresh manner. Titled "Inside Design Now," the survey encompasses everything from home interiors to an artificial heart. The focus remains on experimental projects--whether imaginative recycling or hypothetic innovation--that are advancing design concepts, technology and research without forgetting esthetic appeal.

Overall, the show seems a bit subdued this time and goes more behind the scenes than its predecessor [see A.i.A., July '00], perhaps making it more appealing to design professionals and aficionados than to a product-crazed consumerist public. Considering that the show was planned amid a stalled economy and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the understated tone seems appropriate for the country's current mood. Some 80 designers or firms are represented in more than 300 examples selected by staff curators Ellen Lupton (who also designed the catalogue) and Donald Albrecht, along with independent consultant Susan Yelavich, and Mitchell Owens, interior design director at Elle Decor.

Noticeably improved this time around, the installation design is less combative with the museum's Beaux-Arts interior than it was in the first show, and less distracting as a result. Instead of trying to hide or overcome the museum's architecture, exhibition designers Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger of Matter Practice opted to display many of the works straightforwardly in the ornate spaces. Heightening the disjunction are Paula Scher's linoleum floor mats in the entry hall and elevator and on the second-floor landing, as well as text painted on the elevator's doors and interior, that look like giant chalkboards with handwritten directions mapping out the exhibition and the world beyond. Yet video pieces--always problematic even in larger spaces--are not shown at their best, many of them grouped in one upstairs gallery. To tame the potential cacophony, some of the videos are playing without sound--presumably because the focus is on the visual--but this only cheats the visual experience in cases where sound is surely integral to the overall impact.

Though a fair number of established names are included in the show--Peter Eisenman, Gaetano Pesce, Ted Muehling and Asymptote among them--some of the most interesting selections are by less familiar designers or firms. Demonstrating that design doesn't happen in a cultural vacuum, some projects reveal a social conscience. Wave Garden is an ambitious proposal by Yusuke Obuchi that involves a huge floating artificial landscape that would act as a renewable power plant off the coast of California. During the week, floating tiles would generate energy through piezoelectricity, a 19th-century technology that is used to power quartz watches. The level of consumption during the week would determine the site's configuration on the weekend. If consumption is low, the floating tiles would rise and create a stable recreational landscape for residents. If consumption is high, it would remain an inaccessible power plant and a reminder of wasteful habits. Another socially minded project is paraSITE by artist Michael Rakowitz. The artist worked with the homeless to develop portable shelters made from white garbage bags. The $5 shelters are inflated and heated by attaching a long tube to the heating ducts or steam vents of buildings. Based in Raleigh, N.C., Bryan Bell's nonprofit company, Design Corps, hires recent architecture graduates under the auspices of AmeriCorps, a national service organization that builds affordable housing, among other things; the team is included for its tasteful mobile homes for migratory workers.

Another maker of architecture-on-a-budget is Dennis Wedlick, who uses prefab, standard-issue materials in designs that play on traditional domestic architecture. Prospect New Town is a housing development in Longmont, Colo., created by developer Kiki Wallace and architect Mark Sofield. The novel subdivision features Queen Anne, Tudor and Craftsman bungalows along with colorful modernist examples inspired by Bauhaus and local farming and mining structures. Residents have addresses on streets with such names as Incorrigible Circle and Half Measures Drive.

Moving to home interiors, David and Sandy Wasco are included for their work on the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by Wes Anderson, highlights of which are shown on a video monitor. The couple restored a Harlem brownstone that served as the home of the dysfunctional family, designing the characters' rooms to be unmistakable manifestations of their offbeat personalities. Similarly quirky are real-life interiors by Diamond + Baratta, whose cartoonish schemes utilize and exaggerate historical motifs and traditional home decor, such as 60-foot long hooked rugs. Interior designer and Nest magazine founder Joseph Holtzman has created a wildly patterned and upholstered room in the museum in which visitors can relax and peruse back issues of his design journal, which is both an enticing object and an informative resource.

Among the works with the most apparent links to the past are a pair of molded fiberglass armchairs, made with vintage floral fabric, that glow from within, and a '50s-style dress converted into a hanging light fixture, both by Critz Campbell. In a throwback to 1930s millinery, Kelly Christy stages miniature tableaux, such as a skating rink or birds' nests, atop fanciful hats. Even the New York City MetroCard vending machines by Antenna Design are reminiscent of days gone by with their grade-school color schemes and blocky simplicity. Conversely, the firm's sleekly sterile new subway cars for New York City are more forward-looking and commuter friendly. Displayed here in photographs, it's hard to appreciate their clear signage and mercifully intelligible sound systems.

Some participants look no further than their backyards, or perhaps their attics, for inspiration. The collaborative House Industries has created a series of typefaces inspired by military lettering and local signage in Delaware, where it is based; another font the group designed is Neutraface, which borrows from letters used by architect Richard Neutra in the 1940s and '50s. Paul Elliman's Bits typeface is based on fragments of detritus, such as door hinges or bent paper clips, that lend themselves well to the alphabet. Charles S. Anderson's colorful stock images look like 1950s illustrations; one series is inspired by paint-by-number kits. Graphic designer Laurie DeMartino has a number of projects on view, including boxes for Marshall Field's Frango chocolates. With their crisp design and rich color palette, the boxes themselves seem edible.

Examples of fashion and textile design are more numerous this go-round. Isaac Mizrahi is included for his fantastical costume designs that enhance the surreal quality of dance performances by Mark Morris and the American Ballet Theatre. Dresses by Isabel Toledo are intended to make the wearer "feel sexy" by surrounding the body with pockets of air that, unfortunately, are formed with unflattering bunches of fabric that create a misshapen silhouette. Garments by the duo Loyandford are patched togetber from scraps of seemingly disparate materials, such as gray flannel and chiffon, with varying degrees of success or mess. One wishes for photos of models wearing the enigmatic designs of As Four that are here displayed as sparkly abstract wall decorations. A redesign of the classic Birkenstock shoe by Fuseproject has made the hippie icon nearly unrecognizable and more palatable for a new generation.

In a related fashion vein, the Demeter Fragrance Library, developed by Christopher Brosius and Christopher Gable, consists of such notes as Dirt, Smoke, Snow, and Gin and Tonic, packaged in minimalistically designed clear bottles. David Hoey is included for his outlandish installations in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman, particularly one using a grid of toast as a backdrop. Bureau Betak's spectacular runway shows for such fashion houses as Christian Dior, Hussein Chalayan, Donna Karan and Armani resemble extravagant Broadway productions. The firm undermines its own contribution by presenting the videos on three small monitors encased in ice-cube-like sculptures within a darkly scrimmed space, with only one set of headphones provided.

The willfully naive style of Maira Kalman is well suited to her illustrations for children's books, which she also authors, as well as her fashion drawings that resemble the whimsical paintings of Florine Stettheimer. With Rick Meyerowitz, Kalman created a cover illustration for the Dec. 10, 2001, issue of the New Yorker that became an instant classic; it shows the five boroughs of New York City divided into territories with such names as "Botoxia," "Central Parkistan," "Trumpistan" and "Psychobabylon."

Book designers are well represented in the show. As with Kalman, in some cases they not only design the publications but write or edit them as well. For the biannual visual-culture journal 2wice, J. Abbott Miller of Pentagram selects the contributors, with publisher Patsy Tarr, and creates each edition's distinctive look. Also notable by Miller is the catalogue for the recent museum show of Matthew Barney's "Cremaster Cycle." Exhibition catalogues by Lorraine Wild include the Michal Rovner and "Mies in America" shows at the Whitney Museum, and the respectfully innovative volume The World from Here, which accompanied a show of rare books at the UCLA Grunwald Center and the Armand Hammer Museum. Essentially books within a book, the catalogue contains two-page spreads of the opened rare books so that readers almost have the impression that they are thumbing through the originals. Literary favorite Dave Eggers makes an appearance for his journal McSweeney's, a collection of essays by different writers, which takes various forms, from boxed pamphlets to bound volumes. Each issue is designed and edited by Eggers, who also created the hokey cover for his best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

One of the outstanding animation selections is Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), for which art director Bob Sabiston created an uncanny effect by "drawing" over actual film footage using specially designed "rotoscoping" software based on an early 20th-century animation technique. The result is an organic, continuously shimmying image that makes reality itself seem slippery. Other featured films include Planet of the Apes (2001) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) for makeup design by Rick Baker, and the Virgin Suicides (1999) for the doodly title sequence by Geoff McFetridge, whose gruesomely playful animated spots for the Winter XGames on ESPN are also on view.

Among the innovative Web sites featured in the triennial are those by Alison Cornyn and Sue Johnson of Picture Projects. The duo's site 360degrees.org is a study of the U.S. prison system. Together with their site akaKurdistan.com--which aims to build a virtual national archive for the Kurds, the largest ethnic group without a country of their own--the humanitarian projects present a compelling use of the Internet. Other standouts include Amy Franceschini's digital creations [futurefarmers.com] and the Chopping Block group's engaging and easy-to-navigate sites for Tunmrclassicmovics.com and the bands They Might Be Giants [tmbg.com] and Phish [phish.com/farmhouse], as well as their own Choppingblock.com.

A few projects in the show seem to be the products of gadgeteering scientists rather than of purely esthetic designers (though, it should be noted, designers sometimes have backgrounds in science or often work closely with scientists or engineers in developing projects or products). Robotic flowers by Cynthia Breazeal of MIT Media Lab are intended to respond to human interaction via motion sensors. Displayed here in a dense flower-bed arrangement, they look like throwaway gift items in one of those gimmicky mall stores instead of an evolutionary step in the development of artificial intelligence. Tod Machover, also of MIT, has created objects called Music Shapers that resemble antennaed computer mice or squeezable round balls that allow untrained users, particularly children, to create music through touch and movement. And Abiocor's artificial heart, which is not visible to anyone while in use, is a smaller apparatus than previous models and is designed to more closely resemble a human heart. Though it is somewhat low-key in visual appeal, the heart's inclusion in the show demonstrates the far-reaching implications of design.

Recognizable brand names aren't entirely excluded from the show. The Target Corporation is included for its colorful and clever ad campaigns, as is the ABC network for its bold black-and-yellow graphic ads by Troika Design Group. Ford Motor Company makes an appearance for its Glocar that allows drivers to program custom color schemes using LED lights. Considering the toylike quality of the car's aluminum frame clad in plastic panels, one hopes that the lights' purported safety function is worth the research-and-development dollars.

The current survey is full of small surprises, thought-provoking projects and an array of fun stuff. One of the show's best achievements is in uncovering the numerous sources that spark imagination--science, history and nature, for starters--and in showing that beauty is more than skin deep.

"National Design Triennial Inside Design Now" is on view at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, through Jan. 25, 2004. It is accompanied by a 208-page catalogue with essays by the show's four curators.

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