CW&T

CW&T is the recipient of the 2022 National Design Award for Product Design from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. CW&T started as and remains the two-person design practice of Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. With backgrounds in Architecture, Film and Computer Science, the duo met at NYU ITP where they began their scale- and medium-agnostic approach to design.

Since 2009, CW&T’s work has spanned from interactive software to human-scaled tools that enhance their relationships to work, life, and time. Their practice centers around an iterative process of sketching, prototyping, testing, writing code, machining parts, and building each edition themselves to assess their intuitions around improving their everyday experiences. Their projects have included devices that alter our perception of time, an electronics curriculum for artists, an astrological compass for space travelers, and objects engineered to last multiple generations. 

Sharing their process with their community is essential to their practice. CW&T cultivates an ethos of openness through teaching and open source software and hardware. Their pedagogy extends into the home/​studio where they host office hours to lend a hand, or offer insight to anyone interested in figuring out how to make something themselves. 

Wang and Levy speak extensively on design and technology as a creative medium. They have taught courses on time, electronics, hardware, programming, inflatables, and morphology at Pratt Institute, New York University, and the School for Poetic Computation. CW&T live and work in their Brooklyn-based studio and prototyping shop.

Presented in partnership with Design Core Detroit.

Series presenting partners: Detroit Public Television and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Radio.