Group Exhibitions

Design! Life! Now!
Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt
National Design Museum
New York, New York
Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, Massachusetts
Contemporary Arts Museum
Houston, Texas
December 8, 2006 – April 20, 2008

Curated by Barbara Bloemink, Ellen Lupton, Matilda McQuaid, Brooke Hodge

In 2006, we received an unexpected but life-changing invitation from Barbara Bloemink, then Curatorial Director of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She had heard about our work from Beth Rudin DeWoody—twice—and reached out to see it for herself. We brought a stack of handmade boxes from our Water Tower series and presented them to her and the curatorial team. What was meant to be a behind-the-scenes meeting turned into a spontaneous, in-person pitch to all four curators of the upcoming National Design Triennial: Barbara, Ellen Lupton, Matilda McQuaid, and Brooke Hodge.

We handed each of them one of our early hand-bound books, full of process photos, notes, and documentation of our collaborative design practice. Ellen asked if we’d invented the binding style. We had—just the night before—and she told us it was entirely original. William and I then opened each handmade box to reveal the intricately crafted objects inside: hand-loomed scarves, spiraled necklaces, and glass-beaded accessories, all housed in ultrasuede-lined containers. That meeting ended with unanimous support to include us in the Triennial—one of the most significant honors of our careers.

The exhibition, titled Design Life Now, was a snapshot of innovation across fields, from Apple and Pixar to Herman Miller and Nike. For our contribution, we created an intricate diorama landscape titled Mobile Home, inspired by our family’s annual vacations to a trailer park outside St. Louis. It included 25 hand-sewn boxes filled with beaded trees, objects, and accessories, each representing a specific person or place from that childhood environment. The landscape was built atop scrolls crafted from precious materials—many of which were made in our very first Scrollathon with students in St. Louis.

One of the handbags inside the landscape, made from scrap fabric and adorned with leftover bits from other pieces, was a tribute to our grandfather—a man who collected cans during golf games out of Depression-era habit. Another box honored the riverbank where we’d skip stones and play. It was a body of work rooted in memory, resourcefulness, and the storytelling potential of design.

To be included in a show that framed Google Earth, NASA robotics, haute couture, prefab housing, and our beaded objects in the same breath was staggering. But it confirmed something we had always believed: that design is deeply personal. And deeply powerful.

Participating Designers & Firms
The 87 designers and firms selected for the 2006 “National Design Triennial” include: Acconci Studio, Deborah Adler for Target ClearRx, Apple, Joseph Ayers, Alison Berger Glassworks, Nicholas Blechman, blik, The Boeing Company, Thom Browne, Santiago Calatrava, Cao|Perrot Studio, James Carpenter Design Associates, Clear Blue Hawaii, Preston Scott Cohen, COMA, Lia Cook, Maria Cornejo, Joshua Davis, Hervé Descottes, Niels Diffrient, Christopher Douglas, Electroland, EMECO, Han Feng, Field Operations, Judy Geib, Ron Gilad, Marsha Ginsberg, Google, David Hanson, Graham Hawkes, Herman Miller Inc., Hoberman Associates, Hunter Hoffman, Howtoons, Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, iRobot, Natalie Jeremijenko, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA), Kid Robot, Chip Kidd, Craig Konyk, William and Steven Ladd, Abhinand Lath / SensiTile, Lazor Office, Tom Leader Studio, LifePort, Greg Lynn FORM, Make, Michael Meredith, Thomas Meyerhoffer, Jason Miller, Moorhead & Moorhead, Toshiko Mori Architects, MY Studio / Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Nike Inc., OMA, Panelite, Orlando Pita, PIXAR, Planet Propaganda, Predock Frane Architects, Processing, PSYOP, Ransmeier & Floyd, Readymade magazine, Narciso Rodriguez, Chado Ralph Rucci, Leni Schwendinger, Tom Scott, SHoP/Sharples, Holden, Pasquarelli, Cameron Sinclair, Jessica Smith, Ken Smith Landscape Architect, SpeakUp, Suzanne Tick, Inc., Wowwee, Ltd., Trollbäck & Company, Bernard Tschumi Architects, Hitoshi Ujiie, Rick Valicenti / Thirst, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Scott Wilson, David Wiseman, Tobias Wong, Will Wright, NASA.