Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

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Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, coorganized by Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, and Cube design museum in Kerkrade, Netherlands, features over 60 projects to demonstrate how designers are collaborating with scientists, engineers, environmentalists, academics, and other stakeholders to find inventive and promising solutions to the environmental and social challenges confronting humanity today.

According to Cooper Hewitt director Caroline Baumann, “With 2018 the Earth’s fourth-warmest year on record and global carbon emissions at an all-time high, the crisis of human-caused climate change has never been more dire. Solutions will not emerge without radical new thinking and alliances. Nature brings together some of the most creative and intelligent designers whose works address our complex relationship to nature and its precious resources and advocate for greater empathy for our planet.”

On view May 10, 2019, through January 20, 2020, the Design Triennial will be presented at both Cooper Hewitt and Cube, allowing audiences in the United States and Europe to experience the works simultaneously. Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is the sixth installment of the series, inaugurated in 2000, that looks at new developments in design as they surface in studios, fairs, shops, galleries, and media around the world.

The exhibition is organized into seven sections, which describe designers’ strategies in working with nature: Facilitate, Understand, Augment, Remediate, Nature, Nurture, and Salvage. The examples presented here reflect ideas from these sections.

A 240-page book, Nature: Collaborations in Design, will be published by Cooper Hewitt and Cube, and distributed in the United States by Artbook | D.A.P. and worldwide by Thames & Hudson UK.