American design: 'Good stuff is happening'

National Design Triennial focuses on contemporary work

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March 9, 2000
Web posted at: 12:48 p.m. EST (1748 GMT)

(CNN) -- We don't adapt to our surroundings; we adapt our surroundings to us. The proof is everywhere.

From the homes we live in to the business cards we carry to the computers we type on to the clothes we wear, the things we use are suited to our tastes.

Oftentimes, we've celebrated the work of architects or artists who reflected our tastes in decades past. But the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York is trying something different: highlighting designs as recent as yesterday.

The museum's Smithsonian branch has just premiered an exhibition titled "Design Culture Now." It's part of the National Design Triennial, a series providing a contemporary overview of what the museum considers "leading developments in American architecture and design."

The National Design Triennial is scheduled to run through August 6 and will reappear in updated form every three years.

The exhibit features well-known names as well as designers who work in virtual anonymity, says lead curator Donald Albrecht, who's overseeing 83 individual designers and companies in the 8,000-square-foot exhibition.

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"It includes a young designer in Chicago named Chris Ware who designs comic books for a company he's created called the Acme Novelty," says Albrecht. "Then you've got big companies like Nike and Motorola and Martha Stewart and people like that."

The works share at least one trait: Each must have been "conceived, realized, proposed or commissioned" in the last three years, according to the museum.

Albrecht calls the collection a "mix of high and low and rich and poor."

"We've got everyday products -- toothbrushes and staplers and sunglasses. And then you've got couture dresses by Geoffrey Beene," says Albrecht. "It's a mix of pop culture and more experimental work, a mix of product design and architecture and graphic design."

The exhibit also offers the iMac computer as art form. The Macintosh desktop model revolutionized the industry with its colorful, streamlined appeal, says Albrecht.

"What the iMac did, in some ways, is say to people, 'Even something that you didn't think was designed is designed, and ... it is something you can appreciate," says Albrecht. "It also made other computer companies say, 'Hey, maybe design is important.'"

The exhibit, says Albrecht, highlights the current state of design as the United States turns from one millennium to the next.

"American design seems to be big, aggressive, and vibrant," says Albrecht. "Good stuff is happening, it turns out. The country is in a boisterous, optimistic mood, and design seems to reflect that."

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Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

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