Design Life Now: 2006 National Design Triennial

The National Design Triennial is an ongoing exhibition series at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Inaugurated in 2000, the Triennial seeks out and presents the most innovative American designs from the prior three years in a variety of fields, including product design, architecture, furniture, film, graphics, new technologies, animation, science, medicine and fashion.

On view throughout the museum campus will be the work of 87 designers and firms, ranging from established design leaders such as Apple, architect Santiago Calatrava and Nike, Inc., to emerging designers like Joshua Davis, Jason Miller and David Wiseman.

"Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006," made possible by Target, will be on view from Dec. 8 through July 29, 2007.

Cooper-Hewitt curators Barbara Bloemink, Ellen Lupton and Matilda McQuaid, along with guest curator Brooke Hodge of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, will present the experimental projects, emerging ideas, major buildings, new products and media that were at the center of contemporary culture from 2003 to 2006.

The curatorial team chose the designers and firms by group consensus, and, for the first time, collected nominations from the public through a blog-style Web site, which brought in nominations for designers and firms such as Electroland, Nicholas Blechman, SHoP and Marsha Ginsberg.