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SEPTEMBER 20, 1999
> Cooper-Hewitt Museum Director Resigns
The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum announced on September 15th that Dianne Pilgrim, who has been its director since 1988, has resigned. The Cooper-Hewitt is a branch of the Smithsonian, and the parent institution will be organizing a search committee for her replacement. Ms. Pilgrim will be in office until January fourth, when an acting director, yet to be announced, will step in.
Pilgrim oversaw a $20 million expansion of the museum, in which the historic Andrew Carnegie mansion in Manhattan was joined to an adjacent townhouse. Programmatically, the museum made broad strides outside of its historical roots in connoisseurship and the Decorative Arts. Without yielding that audience, the Cooper-Hewitt has sponsored feminist design exhibitions, in "Mechanical Brides," hosted intellectually challenging seminars on the philosophy of design, and taken an activist role in the cause of Universal design. Pilgrim convinced the Smithsonian's Board of Regents in 1995 to change the museum's name by adding "National Design" to the title. She came to the Cooper-Hewitt after heading the decorative arts department at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and will be returning to research and curating.
> Design Keeps Us From the Sewer: Rashid's Manhole Cover
On September 15th the Consolidated Edison utility company in New York City unveiled Karim Rashid's winning design in a competition for a millennium manhole cover. The circular disk (some things are immutable) features a rectangular grid that is distorted in the middle as though it were bulging. The pattern is like a ball pushing into an elastic net. Rashid was competing with seven other entrants, and by the end of the year his new design will be in place over150 manholes in New York City and Westchester. The cast-iron covers weigh 314 pounds and will cost Consolidated Edison $200 each.
> Automotive Design or Global Power? A Libyan's Dilemma
Well, it seems Colonel Muammar Khaddafi has not really had to choose, since the news is out that Libya's leader has designed "the safest car in the world." It's a five-seater sedan called The Rocket (Saroukh El-Jamahiriya) with tinted windows and a metallic, "Libyan revolutionary green," paint job. The Rocket's exceptional innovation, however, is in form: the front and rear ends are tapered almost to a point. It seems that the thinking was: "gotta be fewer head-on collisions if the head's really little."
The car was unveiled at the 30th anniversary of the overthrow that brought Khaddafi to power, during a Libyan-sponsored summit of the Organization of African Unity. The dictator evidently has dedicated himself to serving the vehicular needs of his people with extreme devotion. Dukhali al-Meghariel, chairman of the company that produced the prototype, said: "The leader really spent so many hours of his valuable time thinking to find a solution, an effective solution to safety." Persuaded, perhaps, that Khaddafi is to insurrection as Midas was to gold, he extolled: "it is a first in automotive history and is sure to cause a revolution in automotive design." Al-Meghariel's company will start manufacturing 50,000 Rockets a year next month.
(This landmark development in design was brought to our attention by a thoughtful reader, David Shardlow [thanks] who saw the coverage by Bob Jennings in the Sydney Morning Herald on September 10th. Any hint of criticism of the Colonel's design is therefore based on Mr. Jenning's reporting, and should be no cause for retaliatory activity directed at the humble Core offices, which are mostly mobile anyway and not easy to find and only filled with harmless design-types who don't deserve to have anything bad happen. And it's really pretty - we all definitely think so.)
> A Designer on a Stamp
No, it's not Starck, it's Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape designer responsible for New York's Central Park, who is now honored with his own stamp. The stamp was formally issued in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects this month. It will show Central Park, two landscape plans and a John Singer Sargent portrait of Olmsted. First class, of course, yet still a bargain at 33 cents.
> Day of Atonement in the Religion of Design
Designers acknowledge that they have a role furthering the excess of stuff in the world, and there is now an opportunity to take a step to right that wrong. Friday November 26th will be "Buy Nothing Day" in the United States. The organizers promise that it will be a "day of cheerful actions about consumption, environment, human rights, fair sharing and sustainable development." Here are the ways to get more information: http://www.ddh.nl/bnd (partly in English).
Or, send this two-line message to "Majordomo@ddh.nl":
info bnd-list
end
Or subscribe to the International Buy Nothing Day Mailing List by sending this two-line message to "Majordomo@ddh.nl":
subscribe bnd-list
end
> US Army Goes to Mac from Windows
The United States Army has decided to completely replace its current Windows NT operating system with a Mac OS, National Public Radio reported on September 14th. The Army found that the Windows system was inherently more difficult to protect from hackers than the Apple system. Repeated patches and corrections to the Windows program, which nevertheless still left the system vulnerable, were the motivation to switch.
> SEGD Awards 2000
The 2000 Design Awards Program for the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) honors the best in environmental graphic design, including way finding projects, exhibit graphics and identity programs. Anne Tryba, manager of the graphic design department at Walt Disney Imagineering, will chair this year's program. Winners will be announced on May 20, 2000 at the close of SEGD's annual conference. The deadline for entries is January 14, 2000, with what SEGD calls a "late deadline" of January, 21 2000. Contact the SEGD office at 202.638.5555, email SEGDOffice@aol.com, or go to www.segd.org
SEPTEMBER 15
> A Public Middle School for Design
The nation's first public charter school for Architecture and Design will open in Philadelphia in September. Students can attend the school from 9th to 11th grade, and will be able to study planning and sustainable design as well as a basic design curriculum. 400 students will have the run of a 26,000 square foot building. (215) 248 3680.
> Proselytizing for ID
The IDSA has just published a deceptively humble promotion piece to answer the perennial question: What is Industrial Design? The flyer is aimed at the undecided student looking for a career, and does a great job of clarifying this polymorphous field. "Industrial Design is the profession that determines the form of a manufactured product, shaping it to fit the people who use it and the industrial processes that create it...." so begins the answer.
One especially nice feature is that this piece is not ugly, as is, paradoxically, so often the case with design for ID promotion. A firm called Strategix, of Montana, gets credit. Send a few to your still-puzzled parents and in-laws.
> Beeping Reminder Cards
The New York Times described a new product this week, a card that beeps every day to remind a woman to take her oral contraceptive. Organon is the maker of the card, and patent holder, as well as being the maker and distributor of the oral contraceptive Mircette. The cards have been available to women abroad for some time and will be given away free with Mircette in the US.
> Hand is to Mouse as Foot is to Rat
Another new product is the "Foot Rat," a computer mouse controlled by one's foot, like a pedal. This black plastic shell slips over a mouse and straps onto the shoe so a sitting person can direct a cursor on screen. While it may be an option for everyone, the Foot Rat is especially effective as a tool for those with wrist, arm, or hand disabilities. It is designed to be used on a pad called, perfectly, a "Rat Mat." Get on point at www.touchtime.com
> Seize the Pen that Sees
A product called the C Pen is also in the news for two remarkable abilities. In form it evokes the shape and size of a fat highlighting pen, with a screen on the flat side. The tip can be used to scan print, which it recognizes and converts to text for storage and later uploading to a PC. The text can be edited while in the pen, and is displayed briefly in the screen before entering two megabytes of storage. More remarkable still is pen's other talent, which is reading and storing handwriting done with the pen. The scanning tip effectively "reads" the writing surface over which it passes to compose the handwritten letterforms. It also stores addresses. www.cpen.com, $200
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