Nature Conservancy/Design

Custom Designed Display Cases

I recently had the pleasure of making a small contribution to a fantastic project created for The Nature Conservancy www.nature.org/ in conjunction with Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Pentagram Design.

The project involved having world renowned designers such as Maya Lin, Isaac Mizrahi, Yves Behar, Abbott Miller and others dispatched “to specific places around the world to create functional objects that reflect and celebrate the natural landscape. Out in the field, the designers learned about a raw material’s source and the communities that produce and depend upon that material for income. Each designer’s final object draws inspiration from the landscape, the people and the material in it’s most basic, unpolished state.” The materials ranged from vegetable ivory from Micronesia, to chicle latex from Mexico to salmon leather from southwest Alaska, among many others.

I was fortunate to work with the very talented designer and artist Abbott Miller of Pentagram Design www.pentagram.com to photograph many of these final objects, as well as the raw materials and some of the custom designed display cases. We shot in the studio and the exhibition and book “Design for a Living World” www.nature.org/design feature the work of several talented photographers who documented the process and the landscapes from around the world.

I am honored to have played a minor role in the realization of this worthy celebration of sustainable design and encourage everyone to investigate this project in depth.

Chicle Latex from Mexico

Indigenous Materials from Bolivia