Digital technology collides with Gilded Age craftsmanship in Andrew Carnegie’s Manhattan mansion

The Cooper Hewitt's Immersion Room

Economic data inform us that we’re in the midst of a new Gilded Age, but Andrew Carnegie’s freshly reopened Manhattan mansion, which houses the rebranded Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, suggests that our sequel is more gilt than gold. After closing for three years, raising and spending nearly $90m, expanding the gallery space by 60 per cent, installing a cornucopia of interactive technology and merging contributions from a fistful of different designers, the hand-wrought opulence of a century ago still outdazzles today’s digital wonders. The Cooper Hewitt remains a triumph of old-fashioned dexterity and sweat. 

Visitors stop first at a swoopy white ticketing desk by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, then proceed to the touchscreen-heavy “Process Lab”, where they can learn a few basic design concepts and dabble a bit themselves. Assertive graphics, steel-and-glass cases and an austerely designed but extravagantly sized gift shop signal that the institution has dropkicked itself into the present. But the moment you step into the Teak Room on the second floor, all that glossy interactive modernity looks suddenly makeshift and drab. The room, a wonderland of laborious woodwork designed by Lockwood de Forest and executed in a workshop in India around 1900, was always an odd interloper in the steel magnate’s sedate Beaux-Arts home. Now it feels like a representative from a distant, handmade time......Continue Reading

> via ft.com