Cooper Hewitt's triennial design exhibit looks at 'Beauty'

NEW YORK (AP) — Every three years, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum offers visitors the chance to take a good, long look at the state of contemporary design.

With the dizzyingly expansive theme "Beauty," the latest triennial, on view in New York through August 21 and then opening at the San Jose Museum of Art on Oct. 7, features hundreds of works from around the world, from experimental prototypes and interactive games to fashion ensembles and architectural inventions.

Starting with "extravagant" beauty, the show opens with a dramatic, polychromatic tulle skirt and a red 1950s pajama top by designer Giambattista Valli, known for his intense romanticism combining a sense of fantasy with simple clean lines.

Nearby, in "ethereal," milliner Maiko Takeda's surreal headgear resembles giant fuzzy caterpillars, with bristles of thinly shredded acetate tinted with color gradients to evoke a sort of delicate synthetic fur that undulates with the slightest breeze.

Van der Wiel uses oppositional forces of gravity and magnetism to create organic, armored forms — including stools and, in collaboration with Iris van Herpen, shoes and dresses — made from a composite of iron filings and plastic or ceramic.

Working at the intersection of computational design, robotic fabrication, materials engineering and synthetic biology, they have created a series of "wearable, synthetic organ systems that could help humans survive the harsh conditions found on distant planets."