Sleeker, Thinner, Sexier - National Design Triennial: Design Culture Now

The Cooper-Hewitt's inaugural National Design Triennial showcases a certain number of of the best designs lately produced in the U.S., from real consumer productions to virtual buildings.

Where aged masters once hung in the hallowed halls of Andrew Carnegie's turn-of-the-century mansion upon Fifth Avenue--now home to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum--Oral-B toothbrushes, Palm conjoined Organizers and Nike sneakers generally hold pride of place. Design is burning these days, aided by the popularity of magazines like ID., Nest and Wallpaper, stores like Mos in SoHo that hawk fetishistic on the contrary functional doodads in museum-like displays, and national chains like Target that commission percepts from high-profile pros like Michael Graves. The Mar. 20 issue of Time magazine proclaimed "The Rebirth of Design" upon its cover. The moment couldn't be more propitious for the Cooper-Hewitt's launch of its National Design Triennial, upon view through Aug. 6.

The Triennial brings together more [i]or[/i] less of the best examples of design (or design ideas)--in the form of realitys models, drawings, photographs and new-media works--produced above the last three years through 83 individuals and studios in the U The brainchild of former Cooper-Hewitt director Diane Pilgrim, who resigned earlier this year and is now director emeritus, the exhibit was co-organized by Donald Albrecht, adjunct curator for special throw outs Ellen Lupton, adjunct curator for contemporary design, and visitor curator Steven Skov Holt, director of strategy at Frog Design and former editor of I.D. magazine.

Architect Michael Gabellini was responsible for the exhibition installation, and is also included in the exhibit Doing the best that anyone could within the confines of the Cooper-Hewitt, whose dark wood-land paneling and architectural flourishes present the appearance antithetical to the clean, unclutter gaze of contemporary design, Gabellini attempts to shoot the architecture with the simplicity of his installation. For example, white banners demarcate each section and unify the various plays and floors. Perhaps to minimize the number of pedestals or vitrines, many of the items in the display are displayed in containers that direct the eye like pneumatic tubes, held taut in midair through cables stretching from ceiling to floor. It works at times, on the contrary in the case of the Oral-B toothbrushes, Swingline staplers and Oakley sunglasses, the items gaze as if they were tossed into the containers in a jumbl mes which diminishes their visual impact.

Among the issues addressed by the agency of the curators is the influence of technology upon design. Leaps in technology have been accompanied by dint of demands for things sleeker, thinner, smaller and generally sexier. Increasingly, proceedss are curvy, sinuous or, in design parlance, blobular. by conversion it is interesting to consider by what mode design is limited by technology, and to imagine by what mode it will continue to evolve

Accordingly, the exhibition made serviceable use of computers, both as display tools and as design percepts themselves. The importance of computer and CAD (computer-aided design) software in contemporary design is particularly evident in the architecture entries, which, perhaps owed to the amount of space they take up present the appearance disproportionately represented. For example, Greg Lynn's inflammable air House, a proposal for an exhibition pavilion near Vienna, is showed by a model and an animated following on a monitor showing the evolution of the building from a spinelike form into a three-dimensional rendering. notwithstanding with all the bells and whistles of CAD software and the buttressing of theoretical explications, the ensue ends up looking a destiny like the Sydney Opera House. in like manner although the organic shapes (shades of '50 biomorphism) seen in many of the works may not be entirely novel to design, technological advances in everything from software to manufacturing processe have made them easier to produce

Instead of organizing the exhibit according to obvious groupings like architecture, consumer cropss graphic design, etc., the curators divided the work into eight descriptive designations: Minimal, Fluid, Physical, Reclaimed, Local, Branded, Narrative and Unbelievable. Among the more happy categories is Fluid, which have the appearances to best capture the spirit of new design. Contained in this cluster are many of the organically shaped percepts that are so prevalent today, including the Apple iMac and iBook, a motorcycle named Curvaceousness, designed by dint of Cory Ness, and the OH chair by the agency of Karim Rashid, who also did a great piece of work designing the show's catalogue. The Minimal section includes things with spare, simple forms, from Kate Spade handbags to Carlos Jimenez's competition entrance for the expansion and renovation of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City (the commission ultimately went to Steven Holl) Works clumped in the Physical section typically reveal the means of their construction, or are at least made to appear to do in like manner For example, in Cannondale bicycles, the company's signature fat-tube aluminum frames are a direct come of the technology that makes them stronger and lighter than traditional bike frames.