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Visionary architects, artists, and builders are using cutting-edge design to transform homes, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and parks. Recognizing the health-promoting power of good design, their blueprints call for farmers’ markets and recreational fields on hospital grounds; planning processes that revitalize challenged communities by engaging local people as colla...
How can we normalize inconceivable futures? At any given moment, there are multiple, parallel futures fighting for dominance – emerging from science fiction, political parties, corporate visions, counter cultures, and more. But in all cases, they need design to compete and thrive. Across the last decade COLLINS has worked with many of the world's leading organizations, inc...
The spaces in which societies undertake to care for their citizens — ranging from health facilities and schools to prisons — have across time shaped fundamental architectural ideas. What do the spaces we build say about our priorities, including our commitment to equal access? What resources are needed to provide dignity and parity around key resources, including the most...
As virtual and augmented reality technologies mature, the line between the physical world and a simulated world begins to blur. By way of amusing features like face filters and animated avatars, many users are embracing augmented realities on a regular basis, sometimes without even realizing it. Join a panel of technologists to discover how these platforms and products are...
What is design’s role in our lives today? How will it evolve in the future? How can design help us address the tumultuous changes we now face? Award-winning design critic Alice Rawsthorn delved into these key themes to write her latest book, Design as an Attitude. From the deepening environmental and refugee crises to the rise of inequality, intolerance, and prejudice to t...
Amid contentious policy disputes and multiple sources of “truth,” how should we engage in informed debate on today’s most significant issues? The visual arts can help. Hear from the co-curator of the exhibition now showing at the Aspen Institute’s Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies about how Bayer’s World Geo-Graphic Atlas was a precursor to the world of information...
Stuart Weitzman is one of America’s most famous shoe designers, known for outfitting countless celebrities (think Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Kate Moss) but — perhaps more importantly — women across the globe who aspire to quality, class, and style. Here, he shares the lessons of his entrepreneurial adventure — which concluded with the 2015 sale of the company for $574 mil...
How we get around fundamentally shapes the way we live, work, and play. From carriages and sailing ships to steam locomotives and propeller planes, methods of moving people and goods have come a long way. Transportation design, however, is an often-overlooked touchpoint in the realm of user experience. Two pioneers in the industry discuss the top design principles for buil...
This conversation with two global design leaders will feature a discussion on how design creates better trajectories for brands and why design will be responsible for creating a benevolent future. We will explore the unforeseen paths taken from Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rem Koolhaus, PepsiCo, General Mills, and the lessons learned along the way to better connect w...
Design’s intrinsic motivation is to improve a user’s experience. There has been a surge of design with and by people with a wide range of physical, cognitive, and sensory abilities aiming to make the lives of those with special needs easier. Fueled by advances in research, technology, and fabrication, this proliferation of functional, life-enhancing products is creating un...
Despite discussion of work-life balance, work is not something separate from our life, but integral to it. Good work is a critical component to a good life. As societies across the globe struggle with economic division and working people who feel left behind, can companies invent a world of work that is more sustainable? The Eileen Fisher company is a certified B corporati...
Where others see challenges, social entrepreneurs see opportunity. Hear from the innovators who build a better tomorrow out of broken systems. How did they approach the design of their world-changing innovations? Learn how they harness the power of collaboration to advance systems-level change, their successes and challenges along the way, and what they see on the horizon.
The threads that connect humans to their natural environments have frayed, and some have completely severed. In an attempt to mend those we still can, designers are forging meaningful connections with nature to make reparations. Their collaborative processes — working with nature and in teams across multiple disciplines — are optimistic, but urgent. In this session, learn...
The Bauhaus was among the most progressive art schools in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. While it existed for only a brief period of time, from 1919 to 1933, its influence on international art, architecture, and design, as well as on educational theory and practice, is unparalleled. A key figure in the history of the school was Herbert Bayer, a Bauhaus maste...
Acoustics, intimacy, clarity: One could argue that how and where we listen to music is as important to the experience as the music itself. “The orchestra has to feel the audience, the audience has to feel the orchestra,” said architect Frank Gehry on his design of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, which opened in 2017. “When they do that, the orchestra plays better, and th...
We're often taught that our surroundings are incidental to our well-being, but an emerging body of research shows that the physical world can be a powerful tool for cultivating happier, healthier lives. Studies show that workers in colorful offices are more alert, friendly, and confident than those in drab ones, that windows can speed healing, and children progress faster...
Africa is having a creative moment. Architects, fashion designers, illustrators, furniture designers, jewelers, and others are collecting a continent’s worth of influences and showcasing them on a global stage. Organizations are stepping forward to champion the notion that creativity and design have the power to fuel an economic revolution. One such organization, Design In...
Art historian Sarah Lewis (Harvard University) and architect Michael Murphy (MASS Design Group) discuss the art and architecture of social justice in America. How do our artistic works create the fabric of national memory both cherished and shameful? How do our structures provide the framework of collective conscience? How does culture help us learn from history and inform...
Herbert Bayer, a Bauhaus-trained artist and designer, settled in Aspen in 1946. Invited by Aspen Institute founder Walter Paepcke, Bayer’s legacy, spanning 30 years in Aspen, is palpable across the campus here: architecture to landscape, painting to sculpture, tapestry to wall-scape. A prolific artist and designer, often referred to as a polymath given the breadth of his a...
Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. Big tech companies may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Is it too late to change course and realize a human-centered future for a...