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OPEN HOUSE!
Please join us for our annual OPEN HOUSE! SVA Department of Design Research, Writing & Criticism 136 West 21st Street, Second Floor Tuesday, November 7, 6:00–9:00 p.m. RSVP Here! “Designers that rise to the top can write, articulate, weave a narrative, and communicate ideas in a compelling way.” Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer, Adobe Considering graduate study […]
WATCH: Mark Hansen, Brown Institute/Office for Creative Research
How to Pronounce Design in Portuguese: Brazil Today
Alum Frederico Duarte’s first major exhibition as curator, “Como se pronuncia design em português: Brasil Hoje,” opens September 23rd, 2017 at the Museu do Design e do Moda in Lisbon. Frederico began researching Brazilian contemporary design as a student at SVA Design Research in 2009 and this show is the largest manifestation of his research […]
How to Pronounce Design in Portuguese: Brazil Today
Alum Frederico Duarte’s first major exhibition as curator, “Como se pronuncia design em português: Brasil Hoje,” opens September 23rd, 2017 at the Museu do Design e do Moda in Lisbon. Frederico began researching Brazilian contemporary design as a student at SVA Design Research in 2009 and this show is the largest manifestation of his research […]
Making Room for Baby
Lila Allen, Class of 2016, wrote her thesis on the design of children’s spaces. Her research was adapted for publication in the 4th issue of Kinder: A Journal Dedicated To Child Design, Past, Present, and Future. Consider the choice between two cribs: One is a Vetro, a fully recyclable, limited-edition acrylic pen by Nursery Works […]
Making Room for a Baby
By Lila Allen Consider the choice between two cribs: One is a Vetro, a fully recyclable, limited-edition acrylic pen by Nursery Works that retails for $4,500—the same crib featured in North West’s nursery in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The second option is the DaVinci Jenny Lind three-in-one convertible crib, on sale for $225. Its […]
Beyond Books & Bookstores: The Designed Experience of Discovery in the 21st Century Book Ecosystem
On December 15th, 2016, Ana De Brito, a midwifery student at Yale School of Nursing, took to Facebook to share an image of a new book—Birth Work as Care Work by Alana Apfel—with friends: “I always loved receiving books as a gifts because #nerd,” she wrote, giving a public shout-out to her good friend Marian […]
Eating Change: Designing a Food System for the Digital Age
The Blue Apron homepage features a birds’-eye view of an open Blue Apron box on a kitchen counter. Two hands in the shot invite you to insert yourself into the scene—as if you’re the one standing at the counter, looking down into this box that is tightly packed with colorful fresh produce. It’s a carefully […]
Unfolding: The Manifold Mysteries of Miniature Folded Medical Inserts
What objects are designed to negotiate the boundaries of chronically ill collective care groups? How are patients assembling digital infrastructures and what can interface designers repair? What does “real world” data make real? In this podcast Karisa Senavitis explores why and how pharmaceutical companies provide obtuse documents in medical packaging.
Car Design is Dead
“Cars have never been more competent than they are today … and never less useful,” wrote the critic Stephen Bayley in his 2012 book Cars. More competent, less useful. The method I used to measure what would seem like a paradoxical statement is the concept of “proper function” and “system function” by theorist Beth Preston. […]
“As technology continues to impact the way we travel, we can expect any number of the following to become commonplace, and we will have an even more personalized experience of a foreign place with the swipe of a finger: geolocation, better connectivity possibilities, wireless energy, personalization, frame-of-mind recommendations, and Augmented Reality.”
—Jenni Young
Tinkering with Design: The Convergence of Design and Hacking
Avinash Rajagopal explores the convergence of the two dominant modes of creation 21st century and its role in realizing an open ecotopia, straight out of Buckminster Fuller’s theories and Bruce Sterling’s fiction.
“Megaprojects have provided especially lucrative investment opportunities. Characterized by the revamping of large swaths of land and the creation of new neighborhoods comprising some blend of residential, commercial, and perhaps cultural spaces, these projects represent a new chapter in the evolution of city building, and an interesting cross-pollination of the two fiercely opposing viewpoints of twentieth century city planning—those of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.”
—Alex Klimoski
“The real value of the experience is actually what is not being pointed out by the sign. According to philosopher Vincent Descombes, ‘The character is at home when he is at ease in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life.’ The feeling of ‘home’ is accomplished by the colors, words, materials, objects, and distinctive design gestures that comprise the storefront. Its unique design captures the character of the neighborhood, which would feel alien if placed in a different part of the city.”
—Derek Edward Love
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.
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.
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.