Modernity and Identity in the Gulf: The Role of Design Education
Nawar N. Al-Kazemi focuses on the role of design education in re-energizing Khaleeji cultural identity, in a region where design is witnessing an influx of imported identities.
Research
Materializing Miniature Living: The Rise of Tiny Houses and Micro-Apartments
Anna Marie Smith explores the future of micro-living, a lifestyle impelled by spatial restraints and a preference towards a more reductive way of existing.
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe sets up his new home in a cave on a desert island and finds that by means of a chair and table, some shelves and hooks his situation looks a lot brighter.
Home
A British native and an American transplant, Alice Twemlow looks to peripatetic whale-enthusiast Philip Hoare for advice on how to find one’s way home.
Sex Wax on the Subway: Mythology and the Urban Surfer
Lynda Decker speaks on NYC’s distinct surf design aesthetic which, with its literary typography and abstract imagery, avoids the typical Californian tropes
Designing a Country from Scratch: Nation Branding in South Sudan
In 2011 the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s newest member state of the United Nations. As Anne Quito outlines, the need for official symbols establishes unique roles for designers during a time of emergence.
Designers in White Lab Coats: When Design Meets Scientific Research
Caterina Francisca examines key transdisciplinary research and speculative design projects that have engaged with the human body as a material, a medium, and a site for critical intervention
Thinking Through Chinese High Fashion Design
Amanda Vallance contends that the ubiquitous “Made in China” label is gradually being challenged by the label “Designed in China.”
Unpacking the Pastoral Food Package: Myth-Making in Graphic Design
Anna Kealey reveals the ways in which packaging design creates a landscape of fictitious imagery, disconnected from realities of food production today.
Khaleeji Design: An Imported Aesthetic?
Nawar N. Al-Kazemi advocates for design students in the Gulf region and an education embracing local history, design aesthetics, and typography.
Materializing Miniature Living: The Rise of Tiny Houses and Micro-Apartments
A primer on micro-apartments and compact living in New York City.
(212) 431-6189
Meg Farmer finds human traces of Donald Judd all but erased in the renovation (and museumification) of his house at 101 Spring Street, New York.
Evolution of the Poison Label: From Skull and Crossbones to Mr. Yuk
Walk through the isles of a pharmacy today and most product labels will have icons that illustrate the integrity of the product, like the rabbit that assures us that the product is cruelty free and not tested on our furry friends. And, the icon of the three green arrows curving towards one another in a […]
Arranging a Room Full of Possibilities
Sleeping on a tatami mattress, which could be endlessly repositioned, allowed Justin Zhuang to turn his childhood bedroom into a space of possibilities.
Brand Politic: Contextualizing Design’s Superpowers in Emergent States
Using first-person interviews with graphic designers and project managers in South Sudan, Anne Quito recounts the challenges and opportunities of creating a national corporate identity suite, and explores the politics, aesthetics, and pragmatics of representation at a national scale.
Exhibiting Fashion: Between Culture and Commerce
Sandra Nuut considers innovative instances of fashion curation and demonstrates the ways in which new critical approaches might provide inspiration and exemplars for museums seeking to escape commercial constraints.
Poppy Red, Poppy Patois
Bryn Smith reflects on the paradox of a now-fashionable hue that we also use to commemorate the first Great War.
Private Lives in the Big City
The New York Times columnist Constance Rosenblum explores the distinctive habitats of New Yorkers.
Bubblegum Pink, Bubblegum Popped
Amanda Vallance meets the gal pal of Barbie and Paris Hilton.
Edith Wharton’s Houses
Architecture critic Alexandra Lange extolls on Edith Wharton’s fluency as a decorator and architect of the domestic milieu