Philadelphia Spotlights Design That Solves Problems and Builds Community
The term “design fair” may call to mind a particular mise-en-scène: a constellation of temporary gallery displays full of limited-edition works by boldface-name designers, glossy catalogs, perhaps a few celebrity sightings, and the clink of Champagne glasses at an invitation-only vernissage. That may do for New York and Miami, but in the City of Brotherly Love, each October, the design festival belongs to the entire city: DesignPhiladelphia, organized by the Center for Architecture and Design, which this year packed more than 120 events into 11 days running October 3–13.
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Glenn Adamson Thinks You Need Less Stuff
In his inspiring new book, Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Object (Bloomsbury, $27), writer, curator, and former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Glenn Adamson, confronts such long-ingrained notions of materiality from several angles. Adamson invites readers to follow along on a series of thought experiments about the objects in our lives, our relationships to them, what they mean, and how we might go about distilling them so that our material footprint is greatly reduced. And this isn’t just an exercise—the future of humanity might depend on it.
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How Furniture Shapes What We Teach Children
How long have children had designed objects to call their own? Ancient toys from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Indus Valley suggest that kids in the ancient world were playing with tiny horses on wheels, bird-shaped whistles, dolls, and even yo-yos several millennia ago. Portrait paintings of well-to-do and royal children from the Renaissance onward suggest that privileged kids wore custom-made clothing, and sometimes had their very own picturesque pets. But the mass marketplace for furniture, books, clothes, and games, as well as public spaces designed specifically with children in mind, is a surprisingly recent phenomenon, as Alexandra Lange explains in her fascinating new book The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids (Bloomsbury, $20).
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Artful Furniture Takes the Stage in Philadelphia
Philadelphia is no stranger to exquisite handmade furniture: It’s a city full of design galleries and renowned university craft programs. In the colonial period and in the early days of the Republic, Philadelphia craftsmen made some of the finest furniture in the New World. Later, nearby Bucks County was home to the furniture makers Phillip Lloyd Powell, George Nakashima, Wharton Esherick, and Paul Evans. So the city of Brotherly Love is a natural fit for the Philadelphia Furniture Show, which, for the past 24 years, has showcased the work of top independent designers from across the country.
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