Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century

A powerful collection of perspectives on the contemporary and evolving meanings of home, and how they capture both the shared and conflicting narratives that impact our country today.

Home is shaped by many factors: culture, region, environment, citizenship, economics, state of mind, and more. Edited by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Making Home explores the diverse perspectives on home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations to reveal how design impacts this country, its value systems, and the people who inhabit its landscapes. Positioning home not only as a place of dwelling but also as a complex and highly subjective ecosystem, contributors show how notions of home resonate through private and public consciousness to inform the shared or conflicting histories that impact our country.

Probing urgent topics related to home such as colonialism, technological innovation, landscapes and the environment, and aesthetics and culture, Making Home uses the framework of design to pair investigative and practical analyses with imaginative and speculative ones. Contributors include designers, scholars, writers, artists, and critical thinkers across disciplines whose work and lived experiences illustrate specific circumstances that shape the contemporary home.

Contributors:
Brian Adams, AphroChic, Joe Baker, Joseph Becker, La Vaughn Belle, Frank Blazquez, Lori Brown, Michael Bullock, CareHaus, Mona Chalabi, Katrina Collins, Michelle Commander,
Sean Connelly, Reverand Houston Cyprus, Design Earth, Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, Leah DeVun, Heather Dewey Hagborg, Terrol Dew Johnson, Jarrett Earnest, Sofia Gallisa Muriente, Roxane Gay, Sophia Gebara, Curry Hackett, David Hartt,
Hord, Coplan, Macht, Joyce Hwang, Alan Isaac, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Dalton Johnson,
Kenneth Kuper, Ruba Katrib, Elleza Kelley, Michelle Lanier, Natalia LaSalle Morillo, Liam Lee, Brent Leggs, Dominic Leong, Sarah Lopez, Gervais Marsh, Carlos Martin, Catherine E. McKinley, Joiri Minaya, Tommy Mishima, Victoria Munro, Maria Nicanor, Caroline O’Connell, Camille Okhio, Betty Poncho, Sheila Pree Bright, Ronald Rael, Suchi Reddy,
Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Tracey Robertson Carter,
Dr. Yashica Robinson, William Scott, Siddhartha V. Shah, SITU Research, Gretchen Sorin, Carlos Soto, Renée Stout, Journey Streams, Isabel Strauss, Davóne Tines,
Gene Tinnie, Dr. Wallis Tinnie, Cornelius Tulloch, Whitney Lee White, Kevin Young,
John Zeisel

A copublication with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron is Curator of Contemporary Design and Hintz Secretarial Scholar at Cooper Hewitt. She organized the award-winning Willi Smith: Street Couture exhibition in 2020.
Christina De León is the inaugural Associate Curator of Latino Design and currently serves as the Acting Deputy Director of Curatorial at Cooper Hewitt.
Michelle Joan Wilkinson is Curator of Architecture and Design at Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).