“How do people want to live?” This winter, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York will aim to explore this question with its new exhibit “The Road Ahead: Reimagining Mobility.”
The exhibition will aim to address issues of mobility such as “accessibility, equity, trust, safety and security,” according to the press release, and will feature projects including London-based engineering group Arup's "Sounds of the Future City" installation, an "immersive sound experience" that explores what future cities may sound like in the face of new technologies; New York–based architecture firm FXCollaborative's "Public Square" concept, which focuses on green, walkable space; and Boston-based architecture firm Höweler + Yoon Architecture's operating system, "Shareway 2030," which restructures the concept of mobility.
Additionally, New York–based organizations Bloomberg Philanthropies and the National Association of City Transportation Officials have conceptualized what autonomous cities may look like in drawings and renderings; Half Moon Bay, Calif.–based delivery service Zipline will showcase its self-navigating delivery drone, and San Francisco–based Starship Technologies will display its autonomous delivery robot.
Pieces highlighting past predictions for mobility from Cooper Hewitt’s and the Smithsonian Design Library's collections will also be on display, including a booklet detailing the 1939 World's Fair's "Futurama," which imagined the world 20 years in the future, and a drawing of a General Motors 1955 car concept.
The exhibition was organized by Cooper Hewitt director of curatorial Cara McCarty, curator of socially responsible design Cynthia Smith, and curatorial assistant Julie Pastor.
The exhibition will open in New York on Dec. 14, 2018, and run through March 31, 2019.
