Emily Leibin examines the largely unknown residential work of the prolific American architect whose career peaked in the early 1960s.

By touching on the issues of identity and appropriation, Hala Abdul Malak contextualizes the cultural and political significance of the ubiquitous Arab headscarf today.

Alan Rapp takes us inside the built environment that are off-limits to most people — sites of infrastructure, remains of yesterday’s heavy industry, outmoded hospitals, dead shopping malls— and sheds light on the shadow side of urbanity.

Angela Riechers reflects on evocative and uncanny memorial objects such as mourning jewelry and funerary urns that practically shimmer with contained emotion.

Becky Quintal examines how the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s Mexico City project the Torre Bicentenario (Bicentennial Tower) was communicated to the public.

What if you could press a button, and have a machine build you any product you wanted? What if the knowledge that has long been the domain of engineers and industrial designers were freely available? Avinash Rajagopal expounds on the designer-hacker generation tinkering with these questions.

While there are many kind-hearted, intelligent designers passionately devoted to helping others and “changing the world,” Vera Sacchetti demonstrates why good intentions are not enough why design alone cannot change the world.

Saundra Marcel unpacks the mass-manufactured stories imparted to young girls via licensed characters.

Michelle Washington illustrates the ways in which the afro has been used as a significant graphic element in the black vernacular narrative.

Stephanie Coffee contextualizes the agency of aural stimuli in designed objects, tools, and gadgets found in our everyday lives.

Sarah Cox presents Detroit’s renewal through the work of its local artists, activists, and citizen-led initiatives.

Amelie Znidaric on storytelling as a powerful tool in the making, selling and critical appraisal of designed objects

Zach Sachs reflects on decay, patina, and impermanence as recurring sources of internal conflict in the culture of designed objects.

Aileen Kwun examines how an emergent cadre of Internet auteurs armed with cutting-edge design tools are crafting new ways for audiences to experience music in the 21st century.

Kim Birks explores the evolving definition of play and its impact on the design of children’s playgrounds.

Molly Heintz examines the dynamics of making the celebrity designer.

Kathryn Henderson explores the visual tableaus featured in the films of Wes Anderson.

Laura Forde casts Jean-Luc Godard as an amateur de design and autodidact whose obsession with designed objects, graphic language and print media resulted in the most iconic body of work in 1960s France.

Amelia Black presents her research about the communicative power of smell in experience of design.