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Face it, Americans don’t get Canada. After hockey and Celine Dion we know shockingly little about our strongest ally, our largest trading partner, the nation with which we share 5,500 miles of border.  Studio 360 thinks it’s time to change that. Canada’s image in the United States needs a fresh start ...

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Before the invention of the dialysis machine, kidney failure was basically a death sentence. Registered nurse Janice Breen explains how the design of dialysis machines has evolved since she started working with them back in 1973 ...

At the Rethink Music conference in Boston last month, programmers, developers, and tinkerers showed up for a 24-hour coding frenzy — a hackathon — at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development (NERD) Center, vying to make the coolest app that could transform music. ...

Ken Segall, former creative director for NeXT and Apple, discusses his new book Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success.

The industrial designer Karim Rashid has 3,000 designs in production — including the Umbra “Oh Chair,” the Bobble Water Bottle, and the “Garbo” trash can — many featuring his signature rounded edges, cast in colorful plastics. Born in Egypt, Rashid found his calling as a designer early. ...

As designs get more technologically complex, Henry Petroski, professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University and the author most recently of To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, says it's more important to study patterns of failure in past projects -- and in historical incidents like the sinking of the Titanic.

Over a couple of decades, Isabel Toledo quietly became one of the most sought-after fashion designers in the business. But in 2009, she experienced overnight global exposure when she designed First Lady Michelle Obama's inauguration outfit. Kurt Andersen visited Toledo's studio ...

Video: Isabel & Ruben Toledo in their studio

It all started with a broken coffee cup. “It was a totally meaningless thing,” remembers Rob Walker, “but it happened to be a coffee cup that I had bought on a trip with my now-wife.” The ceramic casualty made Walker realize that the stories we attach to objects may be ...

Enter Studio 360's Significant Objects story contest

John Hockenberry reports from London, where he visited the UK's National Design Museum to view the "design of the year" nominations on display. With more than 80 entries in seven categories, the designs included a life-size paper hearse and a plan for a hospital in Rwanda that benefits the community.

The Smith Center for the Performing Arts just opened in downtown Las Vegas. Supporters hope the new $470 million cathedral to the arts shows the rest of the country that Vegas is a serious cultural destination that can host pop goddess Celine Dion and ...

Over the last 16 years, the mechanical engineer Adrian Bejan, now a professor at Duke University, has been working on a theory for how the world works. It’s a theory of everything: how living creatures are shaped, how lava flows down mountains. It’s called the constructal law ...

The Takeaway host John Hockenberry spoke Friday at TED2012 in Long Beach, California.

Design has always been a part of Hockenberry's life. His father, who was a designer for IBM and Kodak, taught him what good design looked like.

Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a the Constructal Law accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world. Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, and Social Organization, written with J. Peder Zane, looks at how everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow.

Deroy Peraza, principal and creative director at Hyperakt, and Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360, talk about working together to rebrand teachers.

The Scene: Baltimore
From WYPR's The Signal, a weekly radio magazine devoted to Maryland's cultural scene, hosted by Andy Bienstock.

David Silverman’s got a collection of almost 900 pinball machines, and he’s just opened the National Pinball Museum in downtown Baltimore.  We drop in at the museum for a crash course in pinball history. 

Christmas starts earlier every year, and perhaps the wreaths and peppermint mochas have you rolling your eyes. If so, too bad! It’ll be over soon enough, so light a pine-scented candle, set your Pandora to "Jingle Bells," and dig in to the Studio 360 Christmas archive. ...

Earlier this year we looked at the natural fibers wool and silk, and this week we’re talking about polyester and other synthetics! Polyester is used in carpeting, building materials, and clothing. Sean Cormier, assistant professor in the Textile Design and Marketing Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Jill Dumain, Director of Environmental Strategy at Patagonia, explain how polyester and other synthetics are made and how they’re used.

Roman Mars loves to spotlight the seams and joints that make up the world around us. He's the host of an irresistible podcast called 99% Invisible--a series of tiny radio stories that provoke enormous questions. Roman joins Jad and Robert to play a few favorites, and to chat about the hidden language of design that shapes our lives--from sound effects to stuff that’s more ... concrete.

There’s no shortage of interesting holiday store displays up in the city this time of year, and WNYC wants to see the best ones in your neighborhood. Upload your snapshots and check out our slideshow of creative holiday windows here.