SAFE: Design Takes on Risk

Paola Antonelli, Curator
Department of Architecture and Design
The Museum of Modern Art

No matter where and how we live, we all strive to be safe. Safety is a very basic, urgent need, and although we cannot build an impenetrable guard against destiny and nature, we surround ourselves with defenses, from clothes to superstitions, objects to architectural details, information to blissful ignorance. Design can do a lot to ease our anxiety, as shown by the examples collected here.

The objects selected for this exhibition have been designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to situations of emergency; supply essential information; and provide a sense of comfort and security. They have been selected because they display the ways in which skillful designers can come up with graceful solutions to high pressure predicaments.

Each object displays a remarkable economy of thought and materials, works well, and is easy to use. When it does not work in the traditional sense of the word, it contributes a valuable commentary to our thinking about design and safety. Each object had to transcend the outcome of the equation of its form and function by displaying meaning -- to an individual, to a community, to the world at large -- and ingenious beauty. All celebrate the vulnerability and strength of people as well as the intelligence and talent of the designers.

The situations the objects respond to range from the most mundane to the most exceptional -- from the fear of darkness and of loneliness to the fear of earthquakes and other catastrophes. In all cases, good design goes hand-in-hand with personal needs, providing protection without sacrificing the need to take risks in order to innovate and invent.

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