Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial: It Makes You Think

This 2019 triennial of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York is ambitious, impressive and, above all, thought-provoking. The overriding question it raises: What is design?

This is not your grandparents’ design exhibition of furniture, fabrics, posters, glassware, etc. It seems little concerned with what “design firms” typically do. Much of the design here is the design of research programs and experiments, design not necessarily done for a known market, design at scales from microscopic to regional. Which is not to say people engaged in design won’t learn from visiting it – while enjoying some inspiring sensory experiences.

The projects exhibited are from several countries, and few are more than two or three years old – many of them “ongoing”. It is also notable, reading the triennial’s display labels and catalogue, how often the pronoun “she” occurs.

UNDERSTAND: Curiosity Cloud, 2015-2019; mouth-blown glass bulbs, handmade insects, illumination and insect flight in response to viewer proximity; Katherine Mischer and Thomas Traxler, mischer’traxler Studio (Vienna, Austria).
Installation photo of “Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.” Photo: Matt Flynn

Many of the exhibits resemble, until one examines their concise identifying texts, conceptual art works in an up-to-the-minute gallery or museum show. There are many videos and objects in motion, some at room-size scale, whose impact cannot be fully conveyed in still images.

One enlightening answer to the question “What is design?” as it applies to this show can be found deep in its catalogue texts. It is defined there “as an interface between abstract ideas in science and technology and real life.”

UNDERSTAND: Choreography of Life, 2019; activity of enzyme Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) Synthase, essential to life energy; Charles Reilly (of New Zealand), Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston; © Charles Reilly.
UNDERSTAND: Bruises — the Data We Don’t See, 2018; visualizing distribution of platelets and bruises in patient with autoimmune disease ITP; Giorgia Lupi (Italian), Accurat (New York and Milan), and Kaki King (American); visualization: Procreate, Photoshop; courtesy Giorgia Lupi and Kaki King.
UNDERSTAND: Visualizing the Cosmic Web, 2016; investigating movement of gallaxies; Kim Albrecht (German), Barabási Lab, Northeast University, Boston, based on research from Bruno C. Coutinho and Albert-László Barabási; © Kim Albrecht, Barabási Lab.

The triennial will be on view until January 20, except for a couple of nonessential items in the museum’s garden, now being put away for the season. If New York is less accessible to you than the Netherlands, the same materials are being shown at the Cube design museum in the town of Kerkrade, which produced this exhibition jointly with the Cooper Hewitt.

In an apparent effort to ease the intellectual challenge of 62 individual displays, most involving cutting-edge technologies, the show has been organized into seven categories with single-word titles. Some of the exhibits seem as if they might straddle more than one category, or demand another one of their own, but the museum’s seven may be useful in summarizing this mind-expanding exhibition.

The UNDERSTAND section presents the products of informative research, mainly (but not solely) into the processes of life, in all its forms.

SIMULATE: Visionary Concept Tire, 2016-2019; Bio-sourced and recycled materials with biodegradable 3D-printed tread; Michelin (Clermont-Ferrand, France).
SIMULATE: Zoa prototype biofabricated wall panels, 2019; Modern Meadow, Nutley, NJ.

Drawing visitors’ attention the moment they enter the museum is the Curiosity Cloud, a constellation of suspended clear glass bulbs. Inside each bulb is a hand-fabricated winged insect – replicating a real one, existing or extinct. As one approaches, the nearest bulbs light up and the insects in them take flight. The experience is meant to elicit thoughts about the diversity and transience of life, rather than conveying hard information.

SALVAGE: Woven textile designed and fabricated by Violaine Buet, part of the Department of Seaweed: Living Archive display; photo Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution.

Other exhibits to be explored in this section:

>Video images of possible models for organization of the cosmos.

>A video of some 500,000 atoms attracting and repelling each other in response to chemicals fundamental to the energy and organization of living things.

>Depiction of human tissues responding to an autoimmune disease that produces bruises all over the body, in images that are ironically pretty.

>The visual record of a designer who fitted himself with prostheses that allowed him to join a herd of goats in the Alps and learn what motivates them, including fine distinctions in the quality of grasses.

The SIMULATE portion includes, for the most part, developments of materials from unlikely sources of potential use by designers:

>An optimal aircraft interior partition based on algorithms that mimic the growth patterns of slime mold plus the shaping processes of animal bones, yielding a partition 45% lighter than current ones.

>A revolutionary airless automobile tire whose form and internal structure is based on coral growth, with treads 3D-printed

SALVAGE: Metamorphism, 2017-ongoing; object made of Lithoplast, a clay-like aggregate of minestone, marble dust, and plastic waste; Shahar Livne (Israeli-born), designer. Photo, Alan Boom; © Shahar Livne.

from biodegradable materials.

>A clothing material based on the overlapping patterns in the armor of a pangolin (an ant-eating mammal), with alternating translucent and opaque areas, produced by 3D printing.

>An animal-free leather, with the performance of today’s natural hides, created through fermentation-based processing of genetically engineered yeast.

 

The SALVAGE exhibits focus somewhat more on new uses for existing resources, many now identified as “waste.” Examples include:

>A new clay-like material from plastic waste, inspired by the impact of hot lava on waste material found on Hawaiian beaches.

>Running shoes with uppers made from plastic collected on beaches – five million pairs sold to date.

>Waterproof ink from soot particles recovered from automobile and diesel generator fumes.

>Containers and cords produced from microalgae.

>A variety of textiles and other non-food products made from seaweed.

SALVAGE: Visitors examining vessels by Algae Lab, 2018; biomaterial made of locally grown microalgae, sugar-based biopolymer; Studio Klarenbeek & Dros, (Zaandam, Netherlands) and Atelier Luma (Arles, France); © Scott Rudd.

The FACILITATE displays deal with ways to support and harness natural processes to meet human needs. Accomplishments documented in the exhibition include:

>A dome-shaped “Bamboo Theater,” serving a Chinese village, created locally by directing abundant local growth.

>Cement bricks produced underwater by biological forces similar to those of coral and seashells, in distinctive shapes and colors, without burning fossil fuels.

>A light, easily erected water tower for rural villages that facilitates the condensation of dew and fog and its collection as potable water.

FACILITATE: Bamboo Theater, 2015-ongoing; live bamboo; Xu Tiantian, DnA_Design and Architecture (Beijing); photo Wang Ziling © DnA_Design and Architecture.
FACILITATE: Warka Water Tower, 2013-ongoing; production of potable water from fog and dew; prototype erected in village of Dorze, Ethopia; bamboo, polyester mesh, polyester cable, hemp rope; Arturo Vittori, Architecture and Vision (Bomarzo, Italy) and Warka Water, Inc. (Petaluma, CA); © Architecture and Vision (Arturo Vittori).
FACILITATE: Biocement Bricks, 2017-ongoing; aggregate, bacteria, nutrients, water, nitrogen, calcium; Ginger Krieg Dosier, bioMASON, Durham, NC; © bioMASON.
FACILITATE: Installation view, Project Coelicolor, Terroir 001 (textile), Assemblage 002 (dust coat); silk and streptomyces coelicolor pigment; Natsai Audrey Chieza and firm Faber Futures, 2019; photo Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution.

The show’s AUGMENT exhibits document advances in enhancing nature, which humans have pursued for millennia with such techniques as grafting and selective breeding. Among future-oriented examples:

>A variety of materials developed from the biopolymer found in shrimp and other shellfish, produced through 3D printing extrusion.

>A single tree trunk with grafts that yield 40 different fruits.

>A foldable polymer computer chip now being developed that could augment or duplicate the function of organs such as the kidney.

>A glowing silk produced by introducing genes from one species into the genetic material of another.

AUGMENT: Tranceflora, 2015-2019; glowing transgenic silk; AnotherFarm (Tokyo) with National Agricultural and Research Organization (Tsukuba, Japan) and Hosoo (Kyoto, Japan); © photo by So Morimoto.
AUGMENT: Aguahoja, 2017-2019; Chitosan, cellulose, pectin, acetic acid, glycerin, water; Neri Oxman (Israeli, active USA), The Mediated Matter Group, MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, MA).
AUGMENT: Site photo, Tree of 40 Fruit, 2008-ongoing; cultivar tree with grafts; Sam van Aken; courtesy Sam van Aken and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts; © Syracuse University Photo and Imaging Center.

The REMEDIATE section illustrates ways to address the imbalances in our current ecosystems, reforming today’s procedures, in some cases regenerating past traditions and habitats. Displays include these:

>A two-acre therapeutic forest garden, displayed to you-are-there effect.

>A robotic grip glove using lightweight, flexible components to better approximate natural grip.

>A device for removing microplastic water pollution, using babies’ tights as a net and empty water bottles for flotation.

>A design for a monarch butterfly sanctuary as part of a building façade to be erected on the migration path of the threatened species.

>A system for shorelines that would nurture mangrove seedlings to produce a dense, interlocking natural defense network.

REMEDIATE: Nacadia Therapy Forest Garden, Hoersholm Arboretum, Hoersholm, Denmark, 2011-ongoing; Ulrika K. Stigdotter, University of Copenhagen; © photo by Ulrik Sidenius.
REMEDIATE: Totomoxtle, 2017-ongoing; veneer made from husks, endangered varieties of Mexican corn; Fernando Laposse with Delfino Martinez, Lucia Herrera, and Noé Leon; courtesy © Fernando Laposse.
REMEDIATE: Babylegs, 2017-2019; device for removing microplastic pollution; Max Liboiron, CLEAR (Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action), St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada; plastic bottle, nylon stockings, rope; © Cooper Hewitt.

The final NURTURE portion of the triennial displays efforts to encourage existing life – and in one case to reproduce an extinct animal digitally. Exhibits on this theme:

NURTURE: The Substitute, a computer-generated animation of extinct male northern white rhino, 2019 (presented at full scale in exhibition); Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (British and South African) with The Mill (London); sound by Chris Timpson, Aurelia Sound Works (London); Maya, Unreal Engine, Illustrator, Aftereffects, Reaper ProTools, Blue Ripple, Universal Audio; commissioned by Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Cube design museum; © Cooper Hewitt.

>The design of bioreceptive concrete panels that can support plant life in a variety of building and infrastructure situations.

>Planning and design of an agricultural school for central Africa that is simultaneously a research center and a demonstration farm.

>Digital re-creation of an extinct variety of rhinoceros, which learns to navigate its allotted space as it transforms before the viewer from pixels into a lifelike full-scale moving presence.

Accompanying the triennial at the Cooper Hewitt are changing displays of historical items under the title Nature by Design: Selections from the Permanent Collection. One of the selections now on display, through November 11, is a stunning collection of paisleys, textile products from a variety of places and periods with superb patterns and colors derived from observations of plant life.

A 240-page, amply illustrated with fine color images and with texts detailing all exhibits, is available from the museum at $40.

NURTURE: Nanobionic Plant Project: Ambient Illumination, plants as light sources, 2016-ongoing; Michael Strano, Seon-Yeong Kwak, Pavlo Gordichuk, MIT Chemical Engineering, and Sheila Kennedy, Ben Widger, Anne Graziano, Jeffrey Landman, Karaghen Hudson, Zain Karsan, and Patrick Weber, MIT Architecture, Cambridge, MA, and KVA, Boston; © photo, MIT Prof. S. Kennedy & Prof. M. Strano Research Groups.