If you are in New York between now and January, make sure that the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum's current exhibit Design for a Living World, presented in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy, is on your Museum Mile drive-by. The exhibit's vision was to send noted industrial, fashion and accessories designers like Stephen Burks of readymade, Ted Muehling and Isaac Mizrahi, among others, to various parts of the world let them develop new uses for the local materials/resources. What I love about this exhibit is that each designer seems to have married his or her modern design principles while leveraging the local, functional ways of doing things. For example, Yves Behar designed a micro-plane-like product that would enable locals to harvest cocoa, and collect shavings to minimize waste. Repurposeful design at its best.
(Photos courtesy of Cooper Hewitt; Design Addict)
