There are “super-high-definition smart tables”—glass touchscreens mounted on aluminum pedestals—throughout the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan. By running their fingers across the tables, visitors make shapes that are then displayed as hats, lamps, tables, vases, chairs, or buildings. During the museum’s opening week earlier this month, the system attracted the attention of everyone from a 4-year-old California boy to the 79-year-old architect Ricardo Scofidio. A few journalists debated whether the message—that anyone can be a designer—is the right one for a design museum to send. But slightly more troubling, for architects, is another message: that the way to design a building is to start with a shape. Here, form precedes function.
However, these are quibbles. The Cooper Hewitt is now a far better place to view design than it was before its three-year, $81 million renovation. Since 1976, the museum has occupied a spectacular Fifth Avenue mansion, built by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and itself a decorative-arts showcase. But the American equivalent of Downton Abbey, even as renovated by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates 40 years ago, wasn’t a great place to exhibit new design. The galleries (landmarked spaces that cannot be altered) outwitted curators’ attempts to make shows legible against their dark and ornate surfaces. For years, there was talk of creating new galleries under the lawn behind the mansion. Then Gluckman Mayner Architects came up with a more realistic plan, which involved making better use of the existing building.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.