The fourth-annual Seattle Design Festival (presented by
Design in Public and AIA Seattle) doesn’t start until September, but the plans
for it are going full-speed ahead. Last Friday, around 130 architects,
contractors, designers, and creative minds gathered at LMN Architects for the
SDF Design Rumble—an event to generate ideas for nine large-scale installations
for public display in Pioneer Square’s Occidental Park during the festival’s
opening weekend. This year, the theme is “Design in Motion,” an open and
ambiguous subject that allows designers to encompass both literal and
figurative ideas of movement into their work.
Each of the nine planned installations has a theme ranging
from science to transportation, to information. The groups each include a local
contractor—such as Krekow Jennings, Method Construction, and Schuchart Dow—which
is donating time and materials, as well as creative partnership, for the
installations. In addition, an activity partner relating to the overall theme
or concept of each installation will help drive the purpose or vision for the
final product. (e.g., the activity partners for the transportation them are the
founders of Hub and Bespoke bike accessory shop, and for the body group it’s Tyson
Cecka from Parkour Visions.
The Design Rumble lasted for two hours as groups of attendees
rotated to the different contractor–activity partner teams and sketched out
installation ideas. At the end of the mini-charrette, the team leaders chose
their favorite designs and attendees signed up to work on the installation that
interested them the most.
Afterward, we caught up with Nicole Tsen Lew, designer at
SKL Architects and chair of the 2014
Seattle Design Festival Committee to chat more about the new approach for this year’s
festival.
1. The Design Rumble is new this year to the Seattle
Design Festival. Why did you think that it needed to happen?
This is the Design Rumble’s inaugural year. With the Seattle
Design Festival growing (now in its fourth year) and with increasing interest
in participation, we recognized this as an opportunity to engage a broad
audience of designers, contractors, and even members outside of design fields.
We wanted to open the block party installations up
to the Seattle design community—but how? Initially, we thought of hosting a
competition—designers are used to competing—but in the end, we decided on an
approach that would foster community spirit. That way, the installations would
be the result of a true collaboration, which is what the Seattle Design
Festival and Design in Public do—provide opportunities to work together to
celebrate design and the shared design process to create a better city.
2. What do you see as the advantage of this format?
The Design Rumble was really meant to shake the process up.
It would make collaboration necessary on all levels, and allow interested
designers of all fields, contractors, and activity partners come together to
create the ideas for this year’s block party installations. It was, and still
is, an experiment, and we are happy that the design community embraced this
idea and ran with it!
3. Why did you decide to pair up contractors with activity
partners?
The contractors are all generously donating materials and
their time to build the installations. The activity partners brought the
program to inspire the designs. We wanted to give both of these groups a voice
in the design process. By pairing the contractors and activity partners and
giving them the ability to choose their favorite ideas from the sketches they
received, we knew they would be comfortable with building and creating programs
for the installations.
4. In what ways do you think this year's theme will influence
the installations differently than last year?
Design in Motion is a really far-reaching theme. We can
build on the success of last year’s theme, Design in Health—addressing issues
of transit, walkability, bikeability, mental and physical health—and expand it
to technology, digital media, kinetics, space. It’s a really dynamic theme that
encourages both the people and designs to be actively in motion. As with last
year’s installations, we want them to be engaging, tactile, and fun, whether
you are a designer, builder, or festivalgoer.
5. What are you hoping to see from the participants as
the process moves along?
I’m sure the Festival committee is not alone in eagerly
anticipating the results, which is why we’ve been encouraging participants to
post their process photos to #SDFrumble. The
installations will be an essential component of the block party weekend of the festival
as a showcase of what’s possible when you bring together Seattle’s talented
designers.
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| A selection of sketches from participants. Photo credit: Trevor Dykstra. |
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