The Making Home lecture series at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union presents four free public lectures featuring Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial exhibition participants paired with designers, artists, professionals, and Cooper Union faculty discussing the exhibition’s exploration of home and its relation to design, data, justice, history, and building.

For the first program in the series, Making Home with Data, data journalist Mona Chalabi and representatives from the visual investigation practice SITU Research will discuss their installation “Patterns of Life” in the exhibition Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial. Their work examines the impact of domicile — the destruction of civilian housing during the military conflict — highlighting its profound effects on communities and international efforts to raise awareness of this pressing issue.

The program will be moderated by Christina L. De León, co-curator of Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial.

Mona Chalabi is an award-winning writer and illustrator. Using words, color, and sound, Chalabi rehumanizes data to help us understand our world and the way we live in it. Her work has earned her a Pulitzer Prize, a fellowship at the British Science Association, an Emmy nomination, and recognition from the Royal Statistical Society. In recent years, her art has been exhibited at the Tate, the Brooklyn Museum, the Design Museum, and the House of Illustration. She studied international relations in Paris and Arabic in Jordan.

Chalabi works beside windows, sometimes in her hometown, London but usually in Brooklyn where she is writing a book about the ways we talk about money. It has been optioned by A24 as a documentary series. She is also the executive producer and creative director of an upcoming animated TV show with Ramy Youssef, A24, and Amazon Studios. Her writing and illustrations have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian where she is currently the data editor. Her video, audio, and production work has been featured on Netflix, NPR, the BBC, and National Geographic.

Gauri Bahuguna is a computational designer and Deputy Director at SITU Research. In her current role, Gauri makes complex human rights cases accessible to wider audiences by wrangling large and diverse datasets into visually compelling formats like interactive web platforms, large-scale drawings, and videos. Projects she has led include an investigation into human rights violations against protesters in Sudan and evidentiary presentations of ISIL’s crimes against humanity in Iraq. Additionally, Gauri has previously taught at the Cooper Union School of Art, and given lectures at Carnegie Mellon, NYU, and The Pratt Institute.

Martina Duque González is an Architectural Designer from Mexico City, based in New York City. Her work and research focus on the intersection between Architecture, Performance, and Human Rights Research. She has collaborated on multiple occasions with SITU/Research, one of the leading firms in the field of Visual Investigations, where she has worked as a Researcher, Modelmaker, and Designer for an investigative video piece and a museum exhibition. She is also a studio assistant for the artist Tania Bruguera, whose multi-media work focuses on the relationship between performance and politics. In Theater, Martina has worked as a Set and Projection Designer both off-Broadway and at NYU. She graduated from Cooper Union with a Bachelor of Architecture Degree and a Minor in “History and Society,” with a focus on Performance Studies. Her interdisciplinary interests have resulted in work in various fields.

Christina L. De León is the Associate Curator of Latino Design and the Acting Deputy Director of Curatorial at Cooper Hewitt. Her research focuses on the design and decorative arts of the Americas. De León has held previous positions at the Americas Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About making home — Smithsonian Design Triennial:

The exhibition features 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations exploring design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design. Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Link to the exhibition.

About the museum:

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design and is the steward of one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections in existence — more than 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries. From ancient textiles and works on paper to icons of modern design and cutting-edge technologies, Cooper Hewitt’s collection serves as inspiration for creative work of all kinds and tells the story of design’s paramount importance in improving our world. Link to the museum.

Accessibility & what to expect:

Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience.

About the space: This program will take place at the Great Hall in the Cooper Union Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003. It is wheelchair accessible (via elevators and ramps).

Accommodations: For any questions about accessibility, please email Mauricio Higuera at mauricio.higuera@cooper.edu.

Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within three weeks.

You may see the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Fall 2024 lecture and events schedule here.

Time: 6:30-8:30 pm EST

Free!

Registration