BGuthrie Photos: NY -- NYC -- Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum -- Exhibit: Wyss Institute Selects

NY -- NYC -- Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum -- Exhibit: Wyss Institute Selects:

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Description of Pictures: Wyss Institute Selects
July 12, 2019 – March 8, 2020
Wyss Institute Selects is the 18th installment in the exhibition series that invites designers, artists, architects and public figures to examine and interpret the museum’s collection. The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses nature’s design principles to develop bioinspired technologies and commercial products that will bring about positive impact worldwide. Wyss will present their vision of Biofuturism, which in this exhibition will be inspired by nature and Futurism in design and art.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] CHWYSS_190827_001.JPG	[2] CHWYSS_190827_007.JPG	[3] CHWYSS_190827_013.JPG
[4] CHWYSS_190827_017.JPG	[5] CHWYSS_190827_026.JPG	[6] CHWYSS_190827_031.JPG
[7] CHWYSS_190827_035.JPG	[8] CHWYSS_190827_038.JPG	[9] CHWYSS_190827_042.JPG
[10] CHWYSS_190827_046.JPG	[11] CHWYSS_190827_054.JPG	[12] CHWYSS_190827_060.JPG
[13] CHWYSS_190827_064.JPG	[14] CHWYSS_190827_074.JPG	[15] CHWYSS_190827_081.JPG
[16] CHWYSS_190827_088.JPG	[17] CHWYSS_190827_092.JPG	[18] CHWYSS_190827_097.JPG
[19] CHWYSS_190827_099.JPG	[20] CHWYSS_190827_103.JPG	[21] CHWYSS_190827_109.JPG
[22] CHWYSS_190827_115.JPG	[23] CHWYSS_190827_117.JPG	[24] CHWYSS_190827_120.JPG
[25] CHWYSS_190827_123.JPG	[26] CHWYSS_190827_128.JPG	[27] CHWYSS_190827_137.JPG
[28] CHWYSS_190827_139.JPG	[29] CHWYSS_190827_141.JPG	[30] CHWYSS_190827_145.JPG
[31] CHWYSS_190827_148.JPG	[32] CHWYSS_190827_151.JPG	[33] CHWYSS_190827_153.JPG
[34] CHWYSS_190827_157.JPG	[35] CHWYSS_190827_161.JPG	[36] CHWYSS_190827_165.JPG
[37] CHWYSS_190827_177.JPG	[38] CHWYSS_190827_179.JPG	[39] CHWYSS_190827_183.JPG
[40] CHWYSS_190827_190.JPG	[41] CHWYSS_190827_197.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. CHWYSS_190827_001.JPG: Collection Selects: Wyss Institute The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University leverages nature's design principles to develop new radical solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and engineering. Guest curated by Wyss founding director Don Ingber, in collaboration with his co-faculty, Joann Aizenberg, Jennifer Lewis, Radhika Nagpal, and Pam Silver, the team selected works from Cooper Hewitt's collection to illustrate the theme of Biofuturism. Biofuturism is a formulation of Futurism, the art movement that spread across Europe and the world in the early twentieth century that celebrated the sensation of energy, speed, and dynamism in modern technology. Its pioneering visionaries believed that their creations would hurtle the world into the future. They practiced across many media: painting, sculpture, theater, film, and architecture as well as graphic, industrial, interior, urban, and textile design. One century later, the Wyss Institute is helping to lead a Biofuturism movement that looks to nature for inspiration. It is led by visionaries who use biological design principles and collaborate across multiple disciplines. In this Selects exhibition, the Wyss Institute team presents objects from Cooper Hewitt's collection, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, as well as the Wyss Institute's own projects to explore how Biofuturism--anticipating the future--can use design to engineer a better world.
2. CHWYSS_190827_007.JPG: Model for Spiral Staircase, 19th century
3. CHWYSS_190827_013.JPG: Poster, Movie Treatment for Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970 Designed by Robert Smithson Robert Smithson, with Walter de Maria and Michael Heizer, pioneered Earthworks, an art movement utilizing earth as sculptural material to re-shape terrain in response to a specific site, knowing that the work would be subjected to nature's processes and cycles. Spiral Jetty (1970) was a spiral ridge protrusion of earth and rocks collected from the site and sculpted in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA. Partly submerged, it was Smithson's most celebrated work, and its changing state has been documented through film, photographs, his drawings, as well as this poster.
4. CHWYSS_190827_017.JPG: Digital Print, Save Our Earth
5. CHWYSS_190827_026.JPG: Prosthetic Leg Prototype, 2014 Designed by Scott Summit The underlying geometry of this prosthetic leg was derived from a 3D scan of the user's opposite leg, and thus restores body symmetry and accounts for the user's unique anatomy. Creating this prosthetic requires no medical specialists -- just a tablet-based app and an easy-to-use scanner. Trained specialists are rare in many parts of the world. Because this limb is custom-made for a particular user, the product is a lower theft risk than a standard prosthetic.
6. CHWYSS_190827_031.JPG: Wall Sconce (USA), 1996
7. CHWYSS_190827_035.JPG: Synthetic Biology
8. CHWYSS_190827_038.JPG: Print, Parade Float with the Virgin and Child riding a Dragon, plate 8 from A. Isacchi, "Relatione di Alfonso Isachi intorno l'origine, solennit�, traslatione, et miracoli della Madonna di Reggio [...]," (Account by Alfonso Isachi regarding the Origin, Festivities, Procession, and Miracles of the Madonna of Reggio) On May 12, 1619, citizens of the Italian town of Reggio Emilia transferred the miraculous painting of the Virgin of Reggio to a new shrine, and organized a procession to celebrate. This print, taken from a book describing the event, illustrates a float for the parade in the form of a fantastical, fire-breathing dragon, upon whose neck sits the Virgin and Child.
9. CHWYSS_190827_042.JPG: Platter (France), probably 19th century
10. CHWYSS_190827_046.JPG: Drawing, Design for Unidentified Object in Robot Form Designed by Dan Friedman Likely a design for furniture or sculpture, this drawing reflects Dan Friedman's resistance to the purist, modernist idea that form must follow function. Influenced by his involvement in a European-based philosophical dialogue about furniture since the 1970s, he coined the term "mental furniture" to describe forms in which symbolic meanings beyond the functional are possible. Suggesting both the technological and the human, this design reveals the interplay between pragmatism and fantasy that occupied Friedman throughout his career.
11. CHWYSS_190827_054.JPG: Digital Print, The Bionic Leaf
12. CHWYSS_190827_060.JPG: Shape Memory Scissors, 1997
13. CHWYSS_190827_064.JPG: Brooch, 2015 Designed by Kazumi Nagano
14. CHWYSS_190827_074.JPG: Device, Organ-on-a-Chip, 2009
15. CHWYSS_190827_081.JPG: Digital Print, U.S. Patent for Organ-on-a-Chip
16. CHWYSS_190827_088.JPG: RoboBee (USA), August 2012 Designed by Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering The world's first insect-scale flying robot has a wingspan of 3 cm (1 in.) and is the approximate weight of a honeybee, its source of inspiration. Harvard researchers were responding to the alarming collapse of bee colonies worldwide and wanted to replicate their swarming behavior. Other applications include search-and-rescue missions, environmental sensors, and covert surveillance.
17. CHWYSS_190827_092.JPG: Digital Print, Synthetic Crystal Nanoflowers
18. CHWYSS_190827_097.JPG: 86T Rocking Stool, 1954 Manufactured by Knoll Textiles Noguchi uses the structural integrity of steel rods to create a matrix of connections between a flat, round birch seat and a base. The larger seat may appear to create a top-heavy impression, but is in fact in perfect balance with the smaller base, due to the alignment of the rods connecting the two pieces.
19. CHWYSS_190827_099.JPG: Architecture of Life
20. CHWYSS_190827_103.JPG: Book Cover, R. Buckminster Fuller, Makers of Contemporary Architecture Series, 1963 Designed by Elaine Lustig Cohen In this book cover design by Elaine Lustig Cohen, interconnected struts form a geometric abstract design, while cleverly evoking the content of the book. The cover appears to feature a portion of R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, an architectural structure that relies on the principle of tensegrity. Tensegrity is a term coined by Fuller to suggest the joining of tension and integrity, or elastic cables under tension with compressive rods.
21. CHWYSS_190827_109.JPG: Book Illustration, Buckminster Fuller, Geodesic Dome Construction, figure 1 and 2, 1958
22. CHWYSS_190827_115.JPG: Sculpture, Model for "Greene Guide", 1975
23. CHWYSS_190827_117.JPG: Print, Plate O, F.IIII, Rhombentrikontaeder und Ikosaeder (Rhombic Triacontrahedron and Icosahedron), Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (Perspective of the Regular Bodies) Designed by Wenzel Jamnitzer This print, designed by Wenzel Jamnitzer, court goldsmith to the Habsburg Emperors, belongs to an album featuring geometric figures corresponding to the 5 Platonic solids. Plato connected these geodesic forms with the elements of fire (tetrahedron), earth (cube), air (octahedron), heavenly aether (dodecahedron), water (icosahedron). Here, Jamnitzer presents 2 complex polyhedral variants.
24. CHWYSS_190827_120.JPG: Basket (USA), 1982 John McQueen made this basket for a 1982 exhibition on lace. Employing a simple plaiting technique commonly used in bobbin lace, a majority of the basket shows the whole or torchon ground stitch. The intention was to show how simple techniques of plaiting and interlacing are capable of creating objects that are lightweight yet strong.
25. CHWYSS_190827_128.JPG: Robots (50), Kilobots, 2012
26. CHWYSS_190827_139.JPG: Futurism
27. CHWYSS_190827_141.JPG: Drawing, Design for Undersea Lounge: Scheme 3 Interior Perspective Designed by Russell Heston In the early 20th century, steamships and ocean liners provided tremendous inspiration for designers who looked to the future. This design for an undersea lounge was a collaboration with Russell Heston, whom Donald Deskey hired when he saw his concept for an undersea lounge. Their design features a geodesic dome of steel and double-glazed, tempered, and laminated glass accessed by a pressure chamber at left. Below the seafloor, the dome's foundation houses mechanical and back-of-house facilities. Heston's use of jeweltone pastels heightens the shimmering allure of the subaquatic environment, while his skill as a technical draftsman impresses upon the viewer the plausibility of such a space.
28. CHWYSS_190827_148.JPG: Vegetal Chair, 2009 Designed by Ronan Bouroullec
29. CHWYSS_190827_151.JPG: Flex-Foot Cheetah� Xtend Running Blade, Designed before 2000, manufactured 2013 Designed by Van Phillips Manufactured by �ssur
30. CHWYSS_190827_157.JPG: Biofuturism
31. CHWYSS_190827_161.JPG: Model, Vascular Tree, 2018-
32. CHWYSS_190827_165.JPG: Armchair (Austria), ca. 1860
33. CHWYSS_190827_179.JPG: Print, Fuochi D'Artificio (particolare) (Fireworks, Detail), Progetti scenici per "sintesi futuriste" 1915/1925 (Set Designs for Futurist Syntheses 1915/1925) Designed by Giacomo Balla Giacomo Balla, a leading figure in the Futurist movement, which rejected the past in favor of the dynamic technological developments of the future, created this set and lighting design for Fuochi d'Artificio (Fireworks). Featuring music by Igor Stravinsky, the short performance was first produced in Rome in 1917 and included no actors or dancers -- only dynamic, colorful sets and lighting. Included in a portfolio of Balla's set designs, this composition incorporates geometric shapes in vivid colors that would have been lit internally and externally, responding to Stravinsky's musical score.
34. CHWYSS_190827_183.JPG: Book Illustration, Les mots en libert� futuristes (Futurist words in freedom), Mon ami, ma petite (My friend, my little), 1919
35. CHWYSS_190827_190.JPG: Print, Design for the Ten-Deck House Designed by R. Buckminster Fuller Fuller's Ten-Deck House, composed of ten geometrically shaped floors, was designed to be mass-produced for single-family housing but was never realized. His lightweight aluminum structure was intended to be airlifted by zeppelin and lowered into a crater. Fuller produced low-cost multiples of his drawing using a mimeograph and hand-coloring the prints.
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