DesignPhiladelphia Celebrates City’s Creativity & Innovation
Celebrating the power of design to shape the world and the people who make it happen, the DesignPhiladelphia Festival showcases local talent in fashion, architecture, textile and design with dozens of events around the city. The 11-day event presented by Jefferson features workshops, talks, receptions, exhibitions and more.
The University is hosting 11 programs, including a textile design symposium on the impact designers have throughout the supply chain; a panel discussion about AI’s role in fashion design; and an experimental bamboo pavilion built by architecture students and the IDEA Lab that uses computational design and fabrication methods.
“DesignPhiladelphia is one of the oldest design festivals of its kind in the country,” says Interim University President Dr. Susan Aldridge. “For nearly a decade, Jefferson has sponsored and actively participated in this event because, as educators, we value engagement. We understand what being part of the daily conversations between the community and experts across multiple design disciplines can mean in how we use design to better the world.”
“Threads of Innovation: A Journey Through Textiles, Design and Architecture,” a featured exhibition at Cherry Street Pier, honors Jefferson’s commitment to educating current and future leaders in textiles, design and architecture. The exhibit recognizes the University’s rich history, cross-disciplinary collaboration and achievement in these disciplines.
“Our design curricula is built on the power of understanding the world around us and using a combination of creativity and collaboration to solve problems both locally and globally,” Dr. Aldridge says.
Other DesignPhiladelphia events that highlight the efforts of the Jefferson community include a hands-on art therapy workshop; a medical device pitch session where medical, industrial and textile design students present commercially viable innovations; and the exhibit “Cities Under Climate Threat: Venice – Philadelphia,” which explores solutions for tomorrow’s most pressing problems, such as urbanization, public health and the environment.
“The impacts of climate change, driven by increasing extreme temperatures, rising sea levels and heavy precipitations, interact and play an essential role in socioeconomic and population health, especially in coastal cities like Venice and Philadelphia,” says Edgar Stach, director of the University’s Institute for Smart and Healthy Cities. “The exhibit displays large physical models from Venice and Philadelphia, showcasing speculative urban redevelopment projects and predicted environmental changes to the year 2050.”
The 19th DesignPhiladelphia runs until Oct. 15.