Cooper-Hewitt Launches New Online Guide to Design Week NYC

Design Week NYC is almost here, and the plethora of events going on around New York City can be quite overwhelming. But worry not, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has launched a new tool that will come in very handy: a mobile-ready website, designweeknyc.org, highlighting design-related events around the city during ICFF, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, May 19-22.

Design Week NYC is a grassroots initiative convened to celebrate design at ICFF and the satellite fairs and events being held around the city, including American Design Club’s exhibition at Heller Gallery, Model Citizen, Noho Design District and WantedDesign.

The site provides a central location for information regarding the many design events hosted by numerous organizations around the city. The website uses the Ushahidi platform, which was featured in the Map Kibera project in Cooper-Hewitt’s 2011 exhibition “Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.” The platform enabled the community of Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, to map local resources and publish news. 

“Designers, architects, city officials and media have all worked together to build Design Week NYC and raise awareness of the inspiring projects and events taking place all around the city,” said Caroline Baumann, associate director of the museum. “We’re already looking forward to 2013 and working with the design community, Speaker Christine Quinn and NYC & Company to reinforce New York City’s position as one of the premier design capitals of the world.”

“The website is a key online destination for finding, promoting and interacting with the best of design happening in New York,” said Odile Hainaut of WantedDesign.

Features of the new site include:

• Locations plotted by an interactive map
• Events organized by date and category for ease of identification and sorting 
• Geo-location for mobile search on the go
• Event profiles with space for integration of social media through comments, encouraging community interaction
• Real-time user contributions such as attendance “check in” and commenting on the event profile via smart phone 
• A designated hash tag, #designweeknyc, for users to connect to a unified conversation about design events taking place citywide 
• SMS text messages to be published on the site about specific events 
• Latest design news from a variety of online sources, including metropolismag.com and core77.com

Cooper-Hewitt will be presenting two installations at WantedDesign, (269 11th Avenue, between 27th and 28th streets) with content from recent exhibitions. On view will be images of 60 design solutions from Cooper-Hewitt’s groundbreaking “Design with the Other 90%: CITIES” exhibition, which was on view at the United Nations in fall 2011. The museum will also be previewing works from the exhibition “Graphic Design—Now in Production,” which opens May 26 on Governors Island.

On May 20, Cara McCarty, curatorial director of Cooper-Hewitt, will moderate a 12 p.m. panel at WantedDesign on “Material Glass: from craft to industry, from product to architecture.” Panelists will include architect Jamie Carpenter; glass and video artist Andrew Erdos; Tina Oldknow, Corning Museum of Glass; Josh Owen, Rochester Institute of Technology; and Andrew Page, editor, Glass Quarterly.

The Shop at Cooper-Hewitt will also have an outpost at WantedDesign featuring limited edition, out-of-print and rare books on art, photography and design, Maison Martin Margiela lamps, a selection of Siwa and Postalco products, Field Notes and Cartotechnica vintage colored pencils.