Designers

"Access+Ability" features more than 70 works, from an aerodynamic racing wheelchair to a vibration-activated shirt that allows the deaf to experience sounds, and covers the wide range of innovations occurring in accessible design.

For People Living with Disabilities, New Products Prove Both Practical and Stylish

Cooper Hewitt turns its design eye to beautifully styled wheelchairs, hearing aids and other accessible innovations

Two early Rose Marie Reid designs.

How Swimsuits Became Fashion Items

Rose Marie Reid's vision for beachwear helped shape the modern swimsuit

Ivan Chermayeff (June 6, 1932-December 2, 2017)

Designer of the Smithsonian Sunburst Logo Dies

Ivan Chermayeff was a brilliant designer, a gifted artist and the purveyor of a unique visual language, says Smithsonian curator Ellen Lupton

Jony Ive

Why Jony Ive Is Apple's Design Genius

His work has become the seeds of a tech revolution that is rapidly changing our lives

Little Children on a Bicycle

How Instagram Is Changing the Way We Design Cultural Spaces

As neighborhoods, restaurants and museums become more photogenic, are we experiencing an "Instagramization" of the world?

The minimLET toilet kit

A Sleek Portable Toilet and Other Design Solutions for Disaster Victims

The toilet kit, from a Japanese design studio, is part of wave of interest in design fixes for the problems created by disasters

NMAH director John Gray, designer Hervé Pierre, First Lady Melania Trump and Smithsonian secretary David Skorton pose with the silk crepe gown.

Melania Trump Donates Her Inaugural Ball Gown to the Smithsonian

Mrs. Trump, who confesses a passion for design, had a precise idea of what she wanted to wear on that historic evening

From left: The bell tower of the “Fish Church,” in Stamford, Connecticut; the Sculpture Gallery at Philip Johnson’s Glass House, in New Canaan.

Every Modern Architecture Lover Should Take This Three-Day Road Trip

In Connecticut, works by some of the most notable architects of the 20th century are hiding in plain sight. Take the wheel for this sightseeing tour

Bone Armchair by Joris Laarman Lab, 2007

Have We Been Building Chairs All Wrong?

Experimental Dutch designer Joris Laarman uses algorithms and digital technology to innovate through constraint

A Coco Chanel Little Black Dress, released in 1926.

Why Coco Chanel Created the Little Black Dress

The style icon created a... well.... style icon in 1926

Petit Pli

These Origami Clothes Grow With Your Child

Designer Ryan Yasin is creating pleated garments that could save on money and waste

The National Design Awards honor 11 individuals and organizations described by Cooper-Hewitt director Caroline Baumann as having “elevated our understanding of what great American design is and what it can do to improve the world.”

These Design Champs Are Having Their Moment in the Sun

Three Cooper-Hewitt award winners share secrets and stories with design critic Owen Edwards

Monty Claw with a section of his jewelry works.

Meet the Artists Displaying at This Year’s Santa Fe Indian Market, the Largest Juried Native Art Show in the World

The annual show brings together some of the country’s best traditional and contemporary artists

Watercolor paintings like this were used to produce the dark, dystopian worlds of cyberpunk anime

What Does the Architecture of Anime Look Like?

A new exhibit brings together the creative design behind some of the most iconic cyberpunk anime films

The White House's <a href="http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/floor2/yellow-oval-room.htm>Yellow Oval Room, which Parish redesigned, is often used for formal private receptions. Its furnishings are still in the Louis XVI style today.

How a Groundbreaking Interior Designer Helped Jackie O. Change the White House

Sister Parish is credited with creating American country style, a recognizable and quirky mix of old and new

An earthship seems to rise out of the high plains at the foot of the mountains near Taos, New Mexico.

These Otherworldly "Earthships" Offer Visitors Unusual, Off-the-Grid Accommodations

Spend the night in an art house built from garbage

It looks a bit like a blimp–unsurprising, since Fuller meant it to fly.

Buckminster Fuller Was Good at Ideas, Terrible at Car Design

Fuller held more than 30 patents during his life, but many of his ideas didn't make it off the page–or not for long

Les choses de Paul Poiret (Paul Poiret's Things), 1911

Esperanza Spalding: Jazz Musician, Grammy Award Winner and Now Museum Curator

The title of her latest album "D + Evolution" is also the theme of a new exhibition at the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt

In his 1910 rendering of the Winslow House, Wright seems to mimic Ando Hiroshige’s use of vegetation as a frame.

Frank Lloyd Wright Credited Japan for His All-American Aesthetic

The famed architect was inspired by drawings and works from the Asian nation

Bjarke Ingels

Bjarke Ingels Makes the Impossible Concrete

The star architect is mapping out a new daring plan for the Smithsonian

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