CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/12/2022

What might be possible if society were to design for peace?

New from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Designing Peace: Building a Better Future Now is a remarkable intersectional visual conversation between contemporary activists, designers, architects and theorists who are asking how design can help foster the conditions for global peace today. How can design support humane forms of peace and security? How can it address the root causes of conflict, engage creative confrontation, embrace truth and dignity for peace and justice, and how can it facilitate the transition from instability to peace? “In response to increasingly urgent social, environmental and economic inequities, divisions and crises, a myriad of inspired creative partnerships are surfacing around the world,” curator Cynthia E. Smith writes. “Designers, architects and artists are collaborating with disenfranchised youth and stateless people, international aid agencies and community groups, athletes and scientists, and think tanks and foundations, both in their local communities and across international borders. Designing Peace asks us to join with these creative efforts to confront injustice and to imagine new narratives. To build inclusive, participatory societies that value equity and justice, truth and dignity, creativity and mutual cooperation, beauty and difference, and agency and empowerment, and that nurture respect for each other and for our entire ecosystem. To envision a world that is accepting of multiple voices, behaviors, views and expressions. To begin designing peace, now.”