Sam Aquillano on Building the Design Museum Foundation, Design Process, and the Importance of Play

Sam Aquillano (@samaquillano) is a creative entrepreneur who is bringing new life to what we think of when we talk about museums. Sam is the Founder and Executive Director of Design Museum Foundation, which is challenging norms by bringing his museum to where people already are. Currently located in Boston, Portland, and San Francisco, Design Museum acts like a pop-up retail shop hosting events and programs that are widely accessible to the public.

With a background in Industrial Design from Rochester Institute of Technology, a former consumer electronics designer at Bose Corporation, and an MBA from Babson College, Sam is passionate about applying design as a creative problem-solving process. Sam and I discuss what design means.

He shares some of the museum’s most ingenious projects including a Boston-based public collection of interactive sidewalk benches and their current exhibit of playground spaces. Sam and I reminisce about our own childhoods, drawing parallels between research of human development and the impact of well designed spaces on children’s growth.

I’m delighted to be be on the Design Museum’s San Francisco launch council and highly recommend you visit their exhibit “Extraordinary Playscapes”. I hope you enjoy my interview with Sam Aquillano.