Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design
Triennial
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt
Design Triennial is the fifth installment of the museum’s signature
contemporary design exhibition series. With a focus on aesthetic innovation,
Beauty, until August 21, celebrates design as a creative endeavor that engages
the mind, body, and senses. Curated by Andrea Lipps, Assistant Curator, and Ellen
Lupton, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design, the exhibition features more
than 250 works by 63 designers and teams from around the globe, and is
organized around seven themes: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive,
emergent, elemental, and transformative.
Above. Humans since 1982 - Per
Emanuelsson (Swedish, b. 1982) and Bastian Bischoff (German, b. 1982) - Clock
Prototype – A Million Times – 288H – 2013 - aluminum, electric components, powder-coated clock hands, screen-printed
dials, forge
graphic and mechanical expression to create conceptual objects that expand
traditional function. A specimen study of LEDs serves as a light. Analog clock
hands become typography. Their work is unified in its elegance, if not its
color palette—black and white—and most often explores the ephemeral qualities
of time or light.
Photo by Matt Flynn - copyright 2016 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian
Design Museum
Installation view of "Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
Tuomas Markunpoika – Cabinet from Engineering - Temporality Series 2012
– welded and burned steel rings
As a tribute to his grandmother, who
suffered Alzheimer’s disease, the designer explores memory and its loss in this
conceptual piece. Using a traditional wooden cabinet, Markunpoika wrapped it in
rings of tubular steel and burned away the cabinet. What is left is a blackened
shell, empty of any substance—a fragile ghost of its former self.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Maiko Takeda – Atmospheric Reentry Headpiece
2013-2014 – acetate, acrylic, silver, plastic
Takeda is a milliner and
jewelry designer exploring new expressions of body adornment. Inspired by
clouds, wind, and shadows, her sensual work evokes the immaterial effects of
nature. In her Atmospheric Reentry series, bristles emanate from a wearer’s
head to create a synthetic aura made of thinly shredded acetate tinted with
color gradients. The pieces have the inviting tactility of a blurred,
protective fur.
2x4 – Sidewall, Pause – Knoll
Textiles USA
2004 – wallcovering - screenprinted on vinyl
Hans Coray - Landi Chair
designed 1938
manufactured by P. and W. Blattmann Metallwarenfabrik
1936-61 – molded, punched
aluminum, silver anodizing, rubber
This chair was among the
first successful seating designs using sheet aluminum—a relatively new
lightweight, weather-resistant material—anodized to harden the surface and
protect against corrosion. The seat and back are made of a single molded sheet
perforated with circular holes that lightened the form and when used outdoors
provided drainage from the rain.
Barbara Brown – Spiral – Textile
1969
– Heals Fabrics – cotton, screen-printed on plain weave
Brown is best known for
her bold geometric designs of the ‘60s and 70s. Her distinctive style pioneered
the fashion for architectural scale patterns, including 3D and Op-Art effects.
Sir Paul Smith – World Stamp Map –
Mural - detail
2011 - Maharam - digital
print on cellulose, latex, nylon substrate
Kris Sowersby – Manuka Typeface –
Specimen
2014 – digital print
Manuka (2014) is a narrow
sans serif typeface with a blunt, unpretentious quality. Available in multiple
weights, the Manuka family allows designers to create a variety of typographic
effects. Sowersby, a leader in the field of typeface design, offers his wares
to the global design community through his Klim Type Foundry.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Non-Format – Elsewhere – poster
2014 – silkscreen printed in black and bronze ink
Naomi Yasuda – Tsumabeni – Nail Designs
2016 – nail polish, acyrilic
Naomi Yasuda creates
mesmerizing nail designs that use color as a starting point. She often tops
these tiny paintings with beads and ornaments, transforming nails from flat
canvases into sculptural works of art. She grew up watching her grandmother, a
kimono tailor, make garments from intricately patterned fabrics. The designs
shown here, created for Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, are inspired by
those traditional Japanese patterns.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Lauren Bowker and Unseen – The
Scarab – Air collection – Jacket
2016 – leather, heat and wind reactive ink
Founded by Lauren Bowker
in 2012, TheUnseen applies biological and chemical technology to wearable
materials, creating pieces that transform the way the world sees fashion.
Studying chemistry and textiles at the Manchester School of Art, Bowker
developed a color changing ink, which responds to changing environments. This
ink was added to this finned leather jacket, putting the piece into a state of
flowing metamorphosis as it reacts to heat and wind pressure.
Photograph by Robin Broadbent -Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian
Design Museum
Jean Yu – Overflow Bodice
2015– silk
gazar netting
Jean Yu is known for her
soft yet architectural underclothes, which embrace femininity while eschewing
traditional tropes of lace and padding. The garment reveals its construction:
the bodice is configured from a single piece of silk that meets the lower piece
at the waist. The sculptural form exposes a rolled edge, strategic darts, and
only the slightest bit of lightweight boning.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Terhi Tolvanen – Jungle Twins – The Jungle Collection – necklace
2014 –
silver, wood, Hawk’s eye
This haunting necklace combines
silver, wood, and Hawk’s Eye to form twin crocodile faces entwined around the
front. Silver wraps around the wood base, creating a kind of chain mail effect.
Individual strands wrap over the top of the base pieces to form a leash around
the necks of the crocodiles. The Hawk’s Eye becomes the eyes of the crocodiles,
giving a three-dimensional illusion to their gaze upon the viewer.
Delfina Delettrez – Necklace – The Roll in Stone A/W Collection 2011
Silver, Baroque pearls, freshwater pearls, enamel drops
The curved silver plate of this
necklace wraps around the front half of the wearer’s neck, providing a stunning
platform for freshwater pearls. The pearls are fixed into organically shaped
openings cut into the plate. Each cut shape has been outlined in enamel drops
to create an effect that is both unexpected and harmonious. Delettrez is a
fourth-generation member of the Fendi family.
Brunno Jahara – Blue and Green Fruit Bowls – Multiplastica Domestica
Collection
2012 – plastic and aluminum
Brunno Jahara’s collection
Multiplastica Domestica began in 2012 when, passing by recycling center close
to his studio, he noticed the vast stock of barely used plastic containers that
had been discarded. Experimenting with this material, Jahara created usable
containers and structures that unite sustainability, sculptural quality, and
functionality. For this fruitbowl, Jahara connects the plastic objects to a
central metal spine in order to create a tiered and multicolored arrangement of
vessels.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Jenny E. Sabin – Polythread Knitted Textile Pavilion – Polythread
2015-2016
– 3D seamless garment digitally knit cone elements,
photoluminescent, solar active and drake yarns, twill tape, aluminum tubing
Sabin’s architectural forms are
inspired by nature and mathematics. PolyThread (2016) is a temporary pavilion
commissioned for Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. This knitted textile
structure employs photoluminescent and solar active yarns that absorb, collect,
and deliver light. Portable and lightweight, such a structure could be used
outdoors to absorb light from the sun during the day and release it at night.
Courtesy Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Sou Fujimoto Architects – Souk Mirage
2013 – rendering – digital print
Sou Fujimoto Architects employs
geometric structure to create delicate, complex spaces. Souk Mirage (2013) is a
master plan for a city in the Middle East. Reinterpreting the powerful forms of
Islamic architecture, the project uses layers of arches to fill the expansive
space with light.
Thom Browne Selects
Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
Hewitt Smithsonian Design
Museum – Thom Browne Selects. Fashion designer Thom Browne explores ideas of
reflection and individuality with an installation that includes more than 50 of
the museum’s historic and contemporary mirrors and frames. The exhibition is
the 13th in the ongoing Selects Series in which prominent designers, artists
and architects are invited to mine and interpret the museum’s collection of
more than 210,000 objects, until October 23.
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