Design Shines
by Jennifer Dalton
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Design I
Inga-Britta Mills
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Design Culture Now, a survey of American design in all its permutations, is currently wowing daily crowds at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. As the inaugural Design Triennial, the exhibition effectively transforms Andrew Carnegie's former townhouse into a fun house,
filling it with ingenious designs and contraptions from over eighty
different designers and firms.
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The designers range from the young and barely
known to big names like architect Frank Gehry, fashion designer Geoffrey
Beene and goddess of the hearth Martha Stewart.
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Hearth Warmth
Karen Langbauer
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Object Tree #8
Mark Lavatelli
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The objects, ranging from toothbrushes to running shoes and from graphic design to
architecture, are thematically divided into eight sections under ambiguous
headings like "Minimal," "Unbelievable," "Fluid," and "Local," leading to
some intriguing classifications and juxtapositions.
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Film title sequences are
displayed in the "Physical" section, Kate Spade's Vertical Bucket handbag is
featured under "Minimal," and Chris Ware's comic books, The ACME Novelty
Library, are included under "Narrative."
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Blue Vertical #4
Janet Indick
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Eco-Cycle
Maragaret Clark
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One of the most impressive parts of the exhibition is Testing the Waters,
Julie Bargmann's design for a 45-acre park in Pennsylvania. This
ecological project, currently under construction, will cleanse water and
reclaim land polluted by a former coal mine nearby. In one of the more obviously appropriate classifications in the exhibition, it is featured in the "Reclaimed" section.
Check it out at: http://aen.walkerart.org.
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Read our archived Art in the News |
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