丨美国纽约市丨MASS Design Group

Design and Healing Exhibition

Project Data

Full Team

Year

2023

Status

Completed

Size

1,951 sq ft

Location

New York City, New York, United States

Partners

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Collaborators

Span

Rick Valicenti

Sam Stubblefield

Photographer

Matt Flynn, Smithsonian Institution

Focus areas

Healthcare

Services

Exhibits & Interpretation

Research & Publishing

Project Team

Regina Chen

Jeffrey Mansfield

Michael Murphy

Morgan O'Hara

Maggie Jacobstein Stern

Annie Wang

Full Team

Project Team

Regina Chen

Jeffrey Mansfield

Michael Murphy

Morgan O'Hara

Maggie Jacobstein Stern

Annie Wang

Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics

, curated by MASS and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, was organized during the unfolding of COVID-19.

The pandemic revealed what many have known for a long time: that breathing is spatial and has implications at the scales of body, building, city, and planet. Unequal access to housing, jobs, and healthcare ensured that COVID-19 hit marginalized communities harder than others.

This exhibition presented architectural case studies and historical narratives alongside creative design responses to COVID-19 and attempted to answer the question of every designer, artist, doctor, engineer, or neighbor featured in the exhibition: “How can I help?” Their responses included open-source collaboration, rapid-response prototyping, product hacking, and social activism to create medical devices, protective gear, infographics, political posters, architecture, and community services—all with the shared aspiration to reduce structural barriers that keep us from accessing the care we all deserve.

Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics

was on view at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York from December 10, 2021, through February 20, 2023. MASS’s book

The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity

, published in 2021 by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum complimented the exhibition. It examines how our built world was shaped by disease and reveals how historical examples elicit both caution and inspiration.