Three Years of Design

If you thought advances in technology had made traditional craftsmanship obsolete, David Wiseman might surprise you. The 25-year-old RISD graduate from Pasadena, Calif.—a featured designer in the current National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York—devotes himself to his work with the rapt, low-tech perfectionism of a Renaissance artisan.

Wiseman captured the attention of the design world in 2005 when he transformed the ceiling of a client's Los Angeles dining room into a thicket of intertwining branches, with cherry blossoms bursting from their tips. For that project, Wiseman hand-cut more than 500 porcelain blossoms and fabricated almost 100 branches from plaster and fiberglass, then climbed up and down a ladder in the client's house to attach them. He worked alone most of the time, by choice, and the project took him nearly a year to finish.

Triennial Wall. owers by Ken Smith Landscape Architect.

Credit: Andrew Garn

“I didn't have an exact plan for how the branches would grow,” Wiseman says. “Because I didn't, it allowed me to improvise on the spot. I would go up on a ladder and put a 5-inch segment of a branch up, then come down and be able to look at it in context, and make changes accordingly.” His process, Wiseman adds, is “very visceral.”

Wiseman joins 86 other designers in the Triennial, titled Design Life Now, which is on view through July 29. The exhibits span every facet of contemporary American design, from robotics and computer programs to fashion, furniture, landscape architecture, and lighting design. “For me, the most important thing about the Triennial is the extremes of inclusion,” says Matilda McQuaid, one of the four curators of this year's show. “You have everything from the high-tech to the handcrafted.”

With Wiseman at one end of that spectrum, SHoP, a New York City architecture firm, could be said to represent the other. SHoP has pioneered digital architecture in recent years, using technology to streamline the design and fabrication of buildings. Its Camera Obscura in Greenport, N.Y.—a 350-square-foot, single-room structure that, by means of an optical lens, captures images of the surrounding area—began as a kit of 750 custom parts, many of them laser-cut using digital files from a 3-D computer model.

High tech and low tech: They would seem to be polar opposites. Yet it's a false dichotomy, McQuaid says. “There's so much craftsmanship that goes into these high-tech items, like the robotics,” she observes. “It's very pronounced how much time and effort it takes to produce some of these prototypes. You can talk about them as polar opposites, but at the same time, they're very much related to one another.”

An awareness of craftsmanship—whether a given designer uses cutting-edge software or simply her hands and a pair of crochet needles—is the clearest theme to emerge from this year's Triennial. But it wasn't imposed from on high, the curators are quick to point out.

“We really wanted to start with the objects and designers themselves,” says McQuaid. “Subconsciously, you have themes in your head, and they begin to formulate more concretely as you go through the designers. But really, it wasn't until the final selection had been made that we then went back and began to look at the designers as a large group.”

Barbara J. Bloemink, Brooke Hodge, Ellen Lupton, Matilda McQuaid

Credit: Ben Baker

Guest curator Brooke Hodge, of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, describes the selection process: “All four of us did a lot of research and came up with our own lists,” she says. “We all got together on a couple of occasions and made presentations with images. Then we voted in a blind vote. Anything that got four out of four votes was in, and most of the things that got three out of four were in, too.”

What sets this Triennial apart from past shows, according to Hodge, is the extent of collaboration among the curators. Beginning with their first meeting in early 2004, they spent hours together, sifting through more than 200 objects and designers—culled from magazines, books, museum exhibitions, and events like the Milan Furniture Fair—and winnowing them to the final 87.

“Going to see the show, it does feel like there's a connection between the pieces,” Hodge says. “We all thought it worked really well for us to spend a lot of time with each other.”

Architecture makes a stronger showing this time around than in either 2003 or 2000 (the year the National Design Triennial was initiated). Hodge says the curators consciously tried to represent more architectural design. But Barbara Bloemink, the former curatorial director of Cooper-Hewitt, has a different take: “There didn't seem to be much innovation in some areas, and more in others.” And from 2004 to 2006, she says, “Architecture and landscape architecture … really came to the fore.”

In the pages that follow, highlights from the show attest to the depth, range, and ambition of American design over three change-driven years.

Architecture for Humanity
Designed by Nicholas Gilliland and Gaston Tolila

Credit: Architecture for Humanity

Established in 1999, the California nonprofit Architecture for Humanity uses design to help communities in need around the world. Two years ago, the group matched Neema Mgana, founder of the African Regional Youth Initiative, with Paris architects Nicholas Gilliland and Gaston Tolila and helped them plan a medical center for the remote village of Ipuli in rural Tanzania. Projects like this one “promote architects thinking about designing for the other 90 percent of the world's population,” says Bloemink. “It's part of the [drive for] social responsibility in architecture, which we're hoping increases.” The center is under construction by local people and will open later this year, a testament to what collaborative design, community involvement, and a little money (the total cost is undisclosed) can achieve.

Abhinand Lath

Credit: Sensitile Systems

While writing his master's thesis on bamboo at the University of Michigan's architecture school, Abhinand Lath read a medieval Japanese poem about the shifting colors in a bamboo forest. The poem inspired SensiTile, a technology that embeds fiber optics in tiles made of polymer, concrete, and resin, so that the tiles respond to movement and shadows with “ripples” of light on their surface. At the Triennial, a wall installation of SensiTiles allows visitors to try out their light-conducting properties.

Lath, based in Detroit, “is typical [of current designers] in terms of trying to embed new functionality, whether for aesthetic or practical reasons, into sheeting or façade materials,” McQuaid observes.

Ken Smith
Landscape Architect

Credit: Ken Smith

New York–based Ken Smith takes the idea of a man-made landscape to a new level, using artificial plants and flowers and other synthetic materials to playfully blur the line between nature and artifice. A 2005 installation by Smith at the Cornerstone Café in Sonoma, Calif., has craft-store sun flowers and ferns sprouting at right-angles from the wall, creating the impression of 3-D wallpaper. For his Triennial installation, draped over the front of the Cooper-Hewitt, Smith “plays with the actual physical structure of the mansion,” McQuaid says. “You have these wonderful pop-like flowers that cover the entrance façade, in stark contrast to what's behind it.”

David Wiseman

Credit: Andrew Garn

California-based designer David Wiseman takes his inspiration from organic forms and aims, he says, to “bring nature indoors.” His early designs—some produced while still an undergraduate at RISD—include faceted, artfully imperfect vases of porcelain, glass, and bronze that bring to mind crystals or animal eggs.

For the Triennial, Wiseman decorated an entryway inside the museum with a canopy of not-quite-naturalistic cherry blossoms, all handcrafted from porcelain. “There's been this current in design recently toward a more baroque interest in ornament,” says Hodge. “It's a reaction to minimalism.”

Will Wright

Credit: Electronic Arts

Seven years ago, Will Wright's company, Maxis, released The Sims, a game that allowed players to create and control a family of simulated humans (“sims”) endowed with artificial intelligence. Players can watch their sims fight, play chess, or canoodle in a hot tub—all within houses that players design themselves, choosing everything from the floor plan to the microwave.

Maxis' 2004 update, The Sims 2, introduced digital DNA, allowing players to track sims over generations. “You create a room, you furnish it, you decorate it—then you see what happens,” says Ellen Lupton (whose preteen son is a Sims fan). “Playing a game like that gives one greater respect and understanding of design as [being] not just about surfaces and décor, but actually influencing how people behave.”

Electroland

Credit: Andrew Garn

In their collaboration as design team Electroland, architect Cameron McNall and interactive designer Damon Seeley create environments that respond—often uncannily—to the people moving through them.

At the Cooper-Hewitt, Electroland has designed an installation of fluorescent lights that runs up the staircase from the first floor to the second. As a visitor walks up the stairs, the lights come on, but in a sequence that's not wholly predictable. “It's a social idea—that it's activated by users and responds to users, but also has its own behavior,” explains Lupton.

“Electroland is trying to create a more transparent relationship between the public and technology,” she says. “It's pointing out that the buildings are always watching.”

Deborah Adler

Credit: Target

A few years ago, when her grandmother accidentally took the wrong medicine, Deborah Adler—then an MFA student at the School of Visual Arts in New York—started looking at prescription pill bottles. She noticed that information got lost when it was wrapped around a cylinder, so she designed a D-shaped alternative, along with other improvements: a readable, logically ordered label; color coding; and a slot to hold a patient information card.

Adler's design caught the notice of Target, and the company paired her with Klaus Rosburg, an industrial designer. Adler and Rosburg refined her design into a U-shaped, cap-down bottle, and in 2005, Target pharmacies adopted it nationwide.

Lazor Office

Credit: Joel Koyama

In contrast to the up!house, the FlatPak House hews closely to the rectangular, low-slung style associated with prefab. Minneapolis architect Charlie Lazor, frustrated by his inability to find an affordable modern home, created FlatPak as a flexible kit of parts—the main components are concrete panels, wood-framed panels, and glass—that can be ordered and customized online. After designing the house in 2004, Lazor built his own and moved his family in.

konyk

Credit: David Fano

Prefabricated housing has always seemed to be on the verge of taking off —but never quite does. “It's something that keeps coming up through 20th century architecture, movements toward prefab housing,” says Hodge.

Of the current surge in interest, Hodge remarks, “It'll be interesting to see if it stays or dies out.” Two designs in the Triennial demonstrate not just the continued allure but the potential scope of prefab.

Craig Konyk's up!house is still a prototype, but as its name suggests, it reimagines the low, boxy shape of most prefab houses with a nod to automotive design, proposing a steel “chassis” with coated-metal panels in different color finishes. The Brooklyn architect would like to make buying a modern house as easy as buying a car.

Panelite

Credit: Panelite

Credit: Panelite

With its range of translucent panels—honeycomb cores of aluminum, polymers, and polycarbonate that are faced with resin, fiberglass, or glass—the company Panelite extends architectural possibilities. Founded in 1998 by two architects, Emmanuelle Bourlier and Christian Mitman, Panelite has had some recent breakthroughs. The company learned to curve its cast-polymer panels, making possible the Workstation, a sleek desk developed for OMA's campus center at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

It has also created an interlocking fabrication system called ITL. ITL takes advantage of the panels' inherent strength to frame interior walls and free-standing elements without the need for extra support.

SHoP

Credit: Seong Kwon

SHoP's Camera Obscura (Latin for “dark room”), part of the redeveloped waterfront in Greenport, N.Y., uses ancient technology—an optical lens and a mirror—to project live images of nearby Long Island Sound. The creation of the building itself was far more progressive.

SHoP, a New York firm known for its commitment to research and development, used 3-D modeling software to design the 350-square-foot building and had its main metal components cut by laser off-site.

The structure's undulating wooden wrapper was milled in Brooklyn in a single morning, then fitted over the concrete foundation. “[The architects] don't have to go through a middleman or contractor to produce drawings, which are then used for fabrication,” explains McQuaid. “They can produce everything in-house, so there's no interpretation necessary.” By working closely with engineers and fabricators (who use the same software), SHoP has been able to streamline the design/build process for greater control over details and improved cost-efficiency.

Clear Blue Hawaii

Credit: Clear Blue Hawaii

Designed in 2003 by biochemist Murray Broom for the Honolulu adventure-sports retailer Clear Blue Hawaii, the Napali is the world's first transparent, foldable kayak. Its gently tapering form has already won it a place in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. But the Napali's real triumph is how well it functions. The clear shell allows the kayaker unparalleled intimacy with the marine world below, yet it is surprisingly tough, made of a military-grade urethane stretched over a Kevlar frame.

Weighing only 26 pounds, the kayak is lighter than most fiberglass models, and the collapsible frame makes it easily portable. It can even fit into a backpack.

Greg Lynn FORM

Credit: Greg Lynn Form

Greg Lynn, an architect based in Venice, Calif., is known for the complex, amorphous forms (or blobs, he proudly calls them) of his digitally derived architecture, but he takes an equally experimental approach to smaller-scale product designs. For the Italian company Alessi, Lynn created a coffee and tea service shaped like an alien flower (2003); a set of bulging, bone-china “Supple Cups” (2005); and last year, a line of flatware (still in the prototype stage). The sinuous shapes of the utensils recall the floral motifs of Art Nouveau, and the delicate veins threading through them add an organic—and oddly carnal—touch.

Herman Miller

Credit: Jim Powell

Herman Miller's New Office Landscape borrows from New Urbanism, imagining an office where shared spaces overlap with individual work stations—much as New Urbanist communities have public plazas, stores, and restaurants close to single-family homes. In the New Office Landscape, organic clusters of different-sized spaces—including The Basket, a group seating area with a woven, permeable screen that offers privacy without isolation—supplant the rigid grid of cubicle-land. This emphasis on sociability is a response to how offices function today, now that people can do much of their work remotely. Soon, “people will go to the office not to be alone, but to collaborate, have meetings, and be creative in the environment of other people,” says Lupton.