In honor of its 15th anniversary, DesignPhiladelphia will transform one of the city’s newest and most exciting public spaces, Cherry Street Pier, into the home base for this year’s festival. Presented by Jefferson University, the 10-day event will pay homage to the design history of Philadelphia and give artists and designers a platform to collaborate and share their creativity with attendees.
DesignPhiladelphia’s kickoff party will launch the festival into full-swing, bringing together the who’s who of design-savvy Philadelphians at Cherry Street Pier on Wednesday, October 2, 2019.
For the remainder of the festival, attendees and visitors to Cherry Street Pier will experience over 20 exhibits and installations by Philadelphia designers, as well as the opportunity to observe the work from the Best in Design Competition winner and finalists. All exhibits and installations are free and open to the public during normal Cherry Street Pier operating hours.
A few of the highlighted installations will demonstrate the variety of design disciplines and will be produced by: Jefferson, Lyft, Newton Brown Urban Design, AIA Philadelphia, University of the Arts, Temple University, Coscia Moos + Keast & Hood, Coexist/Hemp House on Wheels, Drexel University, Claudia Mills Design, The Paper Space, and PennDesign. In addition to the hub at Cherry Street Pier, DesignPhilly’s home at the Center for Architecture and Design at 1218 Arch Street will also be bustling with compelling content throughout the festival.
To increase accessibility of this year’s festival, events were strategically planned with geographic proximity in mind, making it easier for guests to attend multiple events in one evening.
“Cherry Street Pier is the ideal hub for DesignPhiladelphia because it is a public-friendly space. It’s an architecturally significant and award-winning redevelopment project, and it offers the space for the creativity of the design community to shine,” said executive director Rebecca Johnson. “The vision and programming that Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has executed with Cherry Street Pier has made the space not only a valuable asset to the Delaware Waterfront, but also to the region at large. We are exceptionally proud to be partnering with Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and are looking forward to bringing a high-quality public festival to their space.”
This year, DesignPhiladelphia has added a new curated dining series, Dine with Design. Featuring events in Center City, South Philadelphia, Fishtown, and Ardmore, the evenings will consist of a culinary experience paired with fascinating “hosts” leading conversation about design, innovation, and the future of our region. All tickets are available online for the Dine with Design series and the kickoff party.
The entire city will transform into a showcase for DesignPhiladelphia during the first weekend of the Festival (October 3-6), from Manayunk’s progressive programming on Thursday night (October 3), to Cherry Street Pier, Old City, and Fishtown’s Design Crawls on Friday October 4, and a vertical design crawl through the new Philadelphia Design Center at East Market on Thursday, October 10, coupled with special Dine with Design events at two of the hottest new restaurants and spaces in the city, Suraya and the new amenity level at Roost at East Market.
This year’s festival highlights include:
• Kickoff Party (October 2)
• DPKidsFest at the Center (October 5) and at Cherry Street Pier (October 6)
• Dine with Design at Suraya (October 4), Bok (October 7), Enoteca Tredici (October 9) and Roost/East Market (October 10)
• Installations and exhibitions at Cherry Street Pier and Center for Architecture and Design, including a Secret Garden immersive pop-up experience at the Center (ongoing)
• Collab at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Center for Architecture + Design present David Fierabend: Spaces to Place (October 12)
• A City By Design, an exhibition at Cherry Street Pier exploring the past 150 years of the changing built environment in Philadelphia, in honor of AIA Philadelphia’s 150th Anniversary (ongoing).
“We are delighted to bring together an eclectic and supremely talented group of premiere designers, planners, innovators and architects of national and international acclaim to showcase and discuss their respective creations and ideas with the public,” Johnson said. “This all-star lineup is truly a celebration and reflection of what DesignPhiladelphia aims to do through creativity, collaboration and community.”
For more information and to learn more about this year’s DesignPhiladelphia Festival, visit: www.designphiladelphia.org.
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