Design and Healing Exhibition
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.
