Pratt students, faculty, and alumni are participating in New York City's inaugural design week, dubbed NYCxDESIGN, a citywide event that showcases and promotes design from all disciplines. NYCxDESIGN seeks to bring together culture, education, commerce, and entertainment, with programs including exhibitions, installations, trade shows, talks, and open studios. Pratt’s participation in the 12-day event, which kicked off on May 10 and runs through May 21, spans various disciplines of design including architecture, industrial design, communications design, fine arts, and design thinking.
Today, the Partnership for Academic Leadership in Sustainability (PALS), a consortium of 30 independent colleges of art and design founded by Pratt in 2009, will present an exhibition titled HOME_LESS_HOME at the 25th Annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The exhibition shows student designs that are inspired by the changing nature of urban society and the impact of climate change. For more information click here.
THIS IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN, the graduate Communications Design thesis exhibition, is one of several Pratt thesis shows that are part of NYCxDESIGN. The exhibitors use printed matter, video, interactive installations, typography, silkscreen, and photography to explore new currents in graphic design. Areas of inquiry include the promises and pitfalls of technology and the manipulation of verbal and visual language in the public sphere, as well as social, emotional, and political empowerment. The exhibition will be on view until June 7 at Pratt Manhattan. For more information click here.
On view until May 22, the American Design Club is presenting Trophy at the Museum of Arts and Design. The design exhibition features Pratt Industrial Design alumni Colleen Whiteley (B.I.D. ’03), Evan Dublin (B.I.D. ’09) and Steph Mantis (B.I.D. ’09), and Pat Kim (B.I.D. ’09). For more information click here.
Other Pratt-related events that helped kick off NYCxDESIGN included Life Preservers, an exhibition of Adjunct Associate Professor James Garrison's post-Sandy prefabricated beach structures for the City of New York; stopTHINKshop, a pop-up store by Kris Drury (B.I.D. ’09), assistant director of the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation, that showcased socially innovative products that have a positive impact; an interactive workshop presented by the Pratt Design Incubator, Design Your Life Like an Entrepreneur, which covered business fundamentals, design strategies, and case studies in surviving self-employment and taking advantage of creative potential; and GEFÜHL, an installation by Pratt's Fashion Department and Karlsruhe University of Art and Design that featured fashion and design products from student design collaborations during a two-week intensive held last summer in both Brooklyn and Karlsruhe, Germany.
Go to NYCxDESIGN to learn about additional programming.
Text: Luke Degnan
