Industrial Design Welcomes Cooper Hewitt’s Ellen Lupton

As part of the recent DesignPhiladelphia Festival, Jefferson Industrial Design welcomed Ellen Lupton to campus for a virtual lecture entitled Design and Healing.

Lupton, Cooper Hewitt‘s senior curator of contemporary design, talked about how designers,architects, engineers, health care workers and neighbors come together in times of crisis. She shared stories and ideas from Cooper Hewitt‘s upcoming exhibition on design and epidemics, and discussed how hacking, open-source design, service design, activism and mutual aid have been sources of good in times of hardship. The presentation was followed by a panel discussion with Industrial Design professor Mike Leonard as well as a Q&A session led by the Meredith Ingrassia, chair of the IDSA Philadelphia Chapter. It was a great evening of thought-provoking design discussion.

Lupton’s exhibition “Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics” will be open from December 2021–August 2022 at Cooper Hewitt.