Design for the Other 90%, an upcoming exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum looks at what happens when designers design for an audience without the privilege and money of the first world. Featuring affordable design solutions for those whose main concern is not a better tea kettle for boiling water but how to get water in the first place, the exhibition includes life-saving designs such as The Life Straw, a mobile personal water purification tool, the Sierra Portable Light, a woven aluminum textile featuring flexible photo-voltaics to provide light and the Q Drum, a circular plastic container used to transport water.

Quoted: On view in the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, this exhibition highlights the growing trend among designers to create affordable and socially responsible objects for the vast majority of the world's population (90 percent) not traditionally serviced by professional designers. Organized by exhibition curator Cynthia E. Smith, along with an eight-member advisory council, the exhibition is divided into sections focusing on food, water, shelter, health and sanitation, education, energy and transportation and highlights objects developed to empower global populations surviving under the poverty level or recovering from a natural disaster.

Related links: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ch/~3/113131270/design_for_the.php