Paola Antonelli on Solving the World’s Biggest Challenges Through Design

There is perhaps no one on the planet with a bigger-picture view on the impact of design—in all of its manifestations—than Paola Antonelli. As the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design as well as its director of R&D, Antonelli consistently expands notions and definitions of what might be considered “design,” and shows how, in no uncertain terms, design connects to practically everything we see, touch, hear, taste, smell, and do. With great passion and energy, she is the ultimate clear-eyed booster of this wide-ranging realm she holds dear. 

Antonelli’s most recent output—the book Design Emergency: Building a Better Future (Phaidon)—is not only an outgrowth of her prolific 28-year career at MoMA (during which she has worked on related projects including the 2005 exhibition “Safe: Design Takes on Risk,” the 2015 book Design and Violence, and the 2019 Triennale di Milano exhibition “Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival”), but also a result of the pandemic. During lockdown in spring 2020, Antonelli, together with the British design critic and writer Alice Rawsthorn, conceived and launched @designemergency on Instagram, a still-ongoing feed that highlights voices central to key global issues, all of them related to improving the world through design. The effort is yet another example of Antonelli’s talent for synthesizing a vast array of provocative projects, designers, products, and ideas; bringing them to the forefront; and giving them much-needed attention. 

On this episode, Antonelli talks with Spencer about time as a frustration, the myth of speed, the importance of going with the flow, and the many design emergencies constantly taking place all around us.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• [04:15] Museum of Modern Art
• [04:15] @curiousoctopus
• [05:38] Objects of Design: From the Museum of Modern Art
• [06:09] “Machine Art”
• [12:54] “Humble Masterpieces”
• [15:44] “Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design”
• [17:42] “Design and the Elastic Mind”
• [25:14] “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology”
• [29:34] Design Emergency
• [29:34] Alice Rawsthorn
• [33:43] @design.emergency
• [45:18] “Items: Is Fashion Modern?”
• [47:02] The 3,000-Year History of the Hoodie
• [51:03] “Safe: Design Takes On Risk”
• [01:04:45] Design and Violence