Designwire

Annie Block, Mark McMenamin, and Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 4/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

"Why Design Now?" That's the question asked by New York's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, for its National Design Triennial, opening May 14. The first Cooper-Hewitt triennial with a global reach, the exhibition offers an answer in the form of 125-plus products and projects reflecting how the international design community can help solve such world problems as climate change and poverty. Curators have divided their material into eight themes. Joshua Silver's affordable Adaptive eyeglasses, for example, fall under Health, while Materials features Maison Martin Margiela's jacket of repurposed plastic.

Julia Lundsten operates her own shoe label, Finsk, out of London. However, she's getting back to her Finnish roots with a collection called Mari's New Shoes, the Marimekko Corporation's first foray into fashion footwear. The mod stripes of a 1965 Marimekko print by Annika Rimala inspired the Alison heel and Siesta flat in two-tone stitched leather.

Issey Miyake's longstanding partnership with watchmaker Seiko Instruments involves inviting architects and furniture designers to try their hand at timepieces. (Naoto Fukasawa and Ross Lovegrove were past selections.) Miyake's latest choice, industrial designer Yves Behar of Fuseproject, responded with Vue—its glass face revealing only the current hour, a nod to our ADHD lifestyle. Behar will delve further into this issue at Chicago's NeoCon fair, where his keynote address will bear the title "Design in the Age of 360°."

Liora's got a brand-new bag. Textile designer Liora Manné's latest effort is a tote in washable, lightweight, antimicrobial polyester microfiber, equipped with a zipper top and an inside pocket. She named the tote Gallery because, like artwork, no two are exactly alike. That's thanks to the intricate handiwork and the choice of four patterns in five colorways: Take lively Gypsy in orange.

In "Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain," the ladies naturally take center stage. Washington's Textile Museum organized the exhibition, which opens May 15 and showcases magazines in addition to fabrics by Jacqueline Groag, Marian Mahler, and Lucienne Day. The latter is covered in greatest depth, via 56 patterns including her 1951 Calyx, a screen-printed linen. She also provides the link to the only gentleman in the show: Her husband, Robin, is represented by furniture.