Making Home

Featuring 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations, Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial explores design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in the museum’s Design Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design. 

The exhibition was organized by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Cooper Hewitt’s curator of contemporary design and Hintz Secretarial Scholar; Christina L. De León, Cooper Hewitt’s acting deputy director of curatorial and associate curator of Latino design; and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator of architecture and design at the National Museum of African American History and Culture; with curatorial assistants Sophia Gebara, Caroline O’Connell, Julie Pastor, and Isabel Strauss.

Exhibition design by Los Angeles–based Johnston Marklee.

Identity

For the visual identity of Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial, the Cooper Hewitt building itself serves as the primary reference. The former home of the Carnegie family acts as the container for the Triennial, bridging public and private, monumental and intimate. The identity reflects this tension, contrasting bold graphics with intricate details. 

Typeface

Bespoke typefaces draw on architectural sketches of the original ironwork and skylights of the staff quarters (now covered for structural reasons), making visible the historical craftsmanship and ornamentation of late 19th-century domestic architecture. The plinths and paravents similarly refer to furniture intended for private rooms of the Carnegie family, using a domestic vernacular to further deinstitutionalize the exhibition space.