MSU student dies in hit-and-run accident in Detroit

Mini-Mies (and Friends)

Now that more children are growing up with exquisite — if expensive — taste, the selection of minimodern classics keeps growing. Indeed, when Modernists preached that design should be accessible to all, they meant children, too. The Eameses created plywood elephants and kiddie stools, and designers like Verner Panton considered their furnishings equally viable at pint-size. Invest in these. MONICA KHEMSUROV.

Family Planning

Wild Thing

Bring out the beast — in a good way.

Short Orderers

Many moons ago I watched aghast as my young niece and nephew cheerfully masticated a lunch of French fries and ketchup during a family ski vacation in Utah. “How can they be allowed to eat like that?” I hissed sotto voce to my husband, who nodded in smug sympathy.

The Best-Dwessed List

Before I had children, I had this delusional idea that their clothes would cost less than grown-up clothes. The proportionately smaller the outfit, the proportionately less expensive. Plus, they would be self-reliant little creatures, like Keebler elves, cozying themselves away in a tree somewhere during the day and knitting their own stocking caps.

Bright Young Thing Emily Pilloton

If the initiatives that Project H Design has taken on seem largely geared toward young people — Learning Landscape playgrounds and sustainable food programs for public schools, to name but two — it may have something to do with the fact that Emily Pilloton, the founder of the not even two-year-old humanitarian organization, is herself only 27. With the help of nine volunteer-driven cells from Austin, Tex., to Johannesburg, Pilloton, who started the company with a laptop and $1,000 while living at home with her parents, aims to create local design solutions and apply them globally. (The playgrounds, for example, were conceived in Uganda and have since been installed in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.) Pilloton is also the author of the just-released book “Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People” (Metropolis Books), which gives well-deserved shout-outs to everything from the Hippo Water Roller (a portable vessel that can carry a week’s worth of water for a family of seven) and Braille-based Lego-style building blocks to D.I.Y. soccer balls (left) and SkySails (which are large enough to help propel cargo ships). “If it’s any consolation,” she insists, “I’ve aged a lot over the last year.” [?][?][?] ALIX BROWNE.