The Seattle Design Festival celebrates ten years with projected August 15th opening

2020-04-06T14:27:00-04:00

For its tenth anniversary, the Seattle Design Festival, presented by Design in Public and AIA Seattle, will be held from August 15th to the 23rd. The nine-day festival regularly hosts over 30,000 visitors, including architects, designers, and business and civic leaders. The event explores how design improves life in Seattle.

This year's theme looks at time. Titles "It's About Time," the program invites visitors to look at the past, present, and future to "reflect on what our opportunities are at this unique moment in history."

"Dramatic change is all around us: beyond coronavirus, urban communities are struggling with economic and social inequities, environmental stress, and political polarization that all demand urgent action. It’s worth asking - how did we get here and what can we do differently over the next decade?" the organizers write concerning this year's festival in a statement.

The big questions participants will explore this year include:

What can the architecture and de...

Susan Surface, the "humble pioneer" for socially responsible design

2015-12-28T12:49:00-05:00

"'Are you going to do beautiful architecture or do-gooder architecture?' I want to do neither and both." [...] "It's not like you're going to design some single product that revolutionizes the way people shape the world around them," Surface said. "You have to change fundamentally how your organization is structured, how your resources are allocated, stop thinking of yourself as a gatekeeper. It's about redistributing how power and decision making and resources are divided between people."

Prompted by her work with Design in Public in Seattle, this profile of Susan Surface dips into her professional and personal background to designing like she gives a damn, covering the diversity of ways she seeks to question the power structures that perpetuate socially irresponsible or discriminatory designs.

Susan joined us on episode #42 of Archinect Sessions, where we address issues of gender inclusive design in public restrooms.

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The Seattle Design Festival celebrates ten years with projected August 15th opening

Susan Surface, the "humble pioneer" for socially responsible design