MFAD first year students in Allan Chochinov’s 3D class descended en masse on Ralph Caplan’s conversation with Bill Moggridge at Cooper Hewitt last night. Caplan is this year’s recipient of the National Design Award for “Design Thinker.”

For more than fifty years, Ralph Caplan has been thinking, writing, and speaking about design and collaborating with designers on exhibitions, films, and publications. His work has addressed the design process as encompassing not only products, but also the larger context in which they are used. Caplan is the author and editor of several books, including By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons and Cracking the Whip: Essays on Design and Its Side Effects. A former editor of I.D. magazine, Caplan continues to contribute to numerous books and periodicals and to lecture across the United States and abroad.