Pushing the boundaries of materials, making, and form, 43 recently acquired design objects are installed in the museum’s Process Galleries, along with documentation of the designers’ creative process.

The working sketches, prototypes, and videos featured in the exhibition elucidate the making of these objects and demonstrate how technology such as 3-D printing enables the fabrication of impossibly intricate furniture forms, plastic garments that can drape like fabric, or customized medical devices that are lightweight and strong. The exhibition also examines how designers use conventional hand-worked materials to advance traditional techniques through a contemporary sensibility, exploring or emulating natural growth processes and forms.

Breaking with traditions to make exciting new products, today’s designers wield the latest technologies and manipulate materials to reinvent the familiar or introduce something entirely new and needed.