Lessons in (Design and Community)

How do designed objects facilitate communal formation? How can they?

This session’s teacher comes to this question through research on the Shakers, a radical millenarian group best known for the things they made like ladder back rocking chairs and oval boxes. But the Shakers’ most innovative creations were the communities in which they lived.

They rejected private property and embraced gender and racial equality, making a way of living together that was rooted in mutual care. They were also celibate, meaning that the religion could only persist by welcoming new believers into the fold. How did the designed objects for which the Shakers are known help to do this? How can design participate in the creation of communal life?

This workshop invites participants to think through this question by reflecting on their own experiences participating in communities, be they intellectual, creative, religious, activist, or otherwise organized. To do this, participants are asked to bring an object that helps them feel connected to a community, past or present. There will be conversation, sketching, and pie.

*Please note that this event will take place at: 57th Street Meeting of Friends (5615 S. Woodlawn Ave.).

This class has been organized by Laurel Hauge as part of Lessons in (Hospitality) which offers a series of classes during the run of this year’s Ground Floor exhibition (August 9–November 1, 2026). While each class in this series has been conceived by a different thinker, maker, and/or professional, they are all centered around the subject: hospitality. The project offers the conditions for a multitude of definitions and interpretations of “hospitality” to be shared, enacted, and embodied.