How might design transform lives around the world? Act as a catalyst for change? Expand access? Include those who have been excluded?

Design with the 90%: Improving Lives Around the World, highlights the global efforts of designers to striving to answer these questions and developing affordable and sustainable shelter, food, drinking water, sanitation, and health solutions for some of the world’s most marginalized communities. Design with the 90%, which was organized by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum features 25 projects that demonstrate how design can be a dynamic force for social change.

Several Seattle-area designers are featured, such as BURN Design Lab, PATH, a leader in global health innovations, and Teague whom collaborated on a design prototype Kenyan-designed Kio Kit, which combines 40 kid-friendly tablets and headphones, a wireless charging case with 5TB of storage and pre-loaded educational content that can transform remote schools into digital classrooms. Review the full list of featured projects.

The exhibition also highlights local issues where design can play a key role in developing solutions to challenges facing communities in the Seattle area. Visitors can participate in a design thinking challenge, get inspired, and connect to local design community programs, and learn more about how to get involved.

Design with the 90% was organized by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

For our visitors with low vision, large-print exhibit labels are available at our front desk or via download.

 

We the Future showcases the stories of ten young leaders working to build an equitable and inclusive world through their respective social change movements. Inspired by Amplifier’s We the Future education campaign and co-curated with the Gates Foundation Discovery Center’s Youth Ambassador Program, the exhibit celebrates youth leadership and action across a range of social justice issues and invites audiences of all ages to imagine and become the change they want to see in the world.

The exhibit features the powerful stories of Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Amanda Gorman, Leah the Activist, Ismael Nazario, Winter BreeAnne, Lydia X. Z. Brown, Lindsay Amer, Amanda Nguyen, Isra Chaker, and Paul S. John  ̶  alongside iconic graphic artworks of each of these 10 young leaders by the artists Shepard Fairey, Rommy Torrico, Munk One, and Kate DeCiccio. The exhibit will include inspiring videos, hands-on art-making, brave spaces for community dialogue, and ways to take action.