Design Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

Border Time

Policing movement in the Rio Grande Valley

February 24, 2025 • by Victoria Hattam

The southern border of the United States has been policed intensively for over half a century. Donald Trump and many other global political leaders have narrowed their policy focuses from bordering more generally to building walls. Even short trips to the US-Mexico border make clear that the wall is not ...

Art & Design

Thinking Design through Literature

Identity: The cultural politics of things and places

May 5, 2021 • by Susan Yelavich

_____ Where design projects possibilities, literature activates their potential and shows their effects. Brought together in Thinking Design through Literature, they form a new and wider tributary in the thought of things and places. That said, in this excerpt from the chapter on culture, readers will note that the word ‘design’ ...

Art & Design

Broom Swept

Failure tells a tale about capitalism too

March 2, 2021 • by Mark Hage

_____ What closes and then darkness, what opens and then bright?Before the horn has risen,where hides the lord of light? —Tian Wen, A Chinese Book of Origins How you frame something is a moral decision. —Babette Mangolte On Mercer Street, on the island of Manhattan, and just before the city paused, walking in a southerly direction ...

Literature

The Goths & Other Stories

June 17, 2020 • by Sasha Kaoru Zamler-Carhart

I In the winter of 476 A.D. the Ostrogoths, hungry and exhausted from wandering for months through barren hills along the confines of the Byzantine Empire, wrote to Emperor Zeno in Constantinople requesting permission to enter the walled city of Epidaurum, and just kinda crash and charge their phones. “My ...

Art & Design

The Urn

How I Stopped Loving Design

May 21, 2020 • by Marcin Wicha

Despite the disappointment, something very valuable was salvaged from our conversations. We had been sharing our enthusiasm for the writers Jerzy Pilch and Olga Tokarczuk when Pawel introduced me to the work of Marcin Wicha. Wicha is as sardonic as Pilch and Tokarczuk, and like them, he writes about politics. ...

Fashion

The Dharma of Fashion

If you crave fashion, make friends with your desire

March 30, 2020 • by Otto von Busch

It is said that on the eve of his enlightenment, the Buddha sat beneath a tree and was assailed by the demon Mara. Mara is literally “Death,” the personification of temptation and distraction. Using seductive images and ultimately doubt, Mara challenged the Buddha, distracting him from his goal of enlightenment. ...

Art & Design

The Boogie Down Brigade

Celebrating Bronx Fashion Superheroes

September 28, 2019 • by Mikaila Brown

--- Local heroes like Amaurys the Ambassador have a plan to win the support of the people. His weapon of choice is his fashion line, The Bronx Native. His bullets are iconic Bronx-specific-imagery, like Cardi B’s sassiness and bodacious bodegas. ILLUSTRATION BY: MIKAILA BROWN Jessica the Influencer is using Instagram to embolden women ...

Feature

How to Mark a Centennial

Telling the Story of the New School at 100

January 28, 2019 • by Mark Larrimore

“In 1896, a minor event occurred in New York’s art world that would, in time, transform American art education.” So began the sample script sent to 60 Minutes by the consultant hired to help make the upcoming centennial an event of national significance. CBS didn’t bite, and the proposed segment never ...

Feature

Redesigning The New School Histories Website

An announcement

July 8, 2018 • by Julia Foulkes, Mark Larrimore and Wendy Scheir

We are delighted to announce that we have re-designed the New School Histories website. The site features a more compelling design, a tagging system that brings together materials about particular topics, and an expanded search function -- all thanks to the website developer Katerina Vaseva, a New School alum. People is a collection ...

Redesigning The New School Histories Website

Feature

Utopoly

A utopian design game

December 18, 2017 • by Neil Farnan

Since Hayek’s Road to Serfdom managed to conflate planning with totalitarianism, the use of design in utopian discourse can cause concern in some quarters, suggesting a master-plan or blueprint model. However, Hayek’s concern was with the failure of planning rather than its success. The irony was that a key component of capitalist ...

Feature

Investigating Normal

Sara Hendren

August 23, 2017 • by GIDEST

Is it possible to engineer an inclusive social future? An artist in an engineering school, Sara Hendren's work is driven by questions about human ability in tech-driven cultures. What counts as normal capacity? Which technologies liberate, and which confine? Drawing from disability studies, design research, social practice art, and urban planning, ...

Feature

Critical Design

By Tony Dunne & Fiona Raby

March 21, 2017 • by GIDEST

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are professors of Design and Emerging Technology at The New School and partners in the design studio Dunne & Raby. They use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing ...