Big City Forum #5

Big City Forum 5

Design as a catalyst for change...

Tuesday, June 30, 7 - 9 pm
(check-in and refreshments 6:30 pm)

Art Center College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena,CA 91103
Faculty Lounge

Featuring:

-Alissa Walker

-Designmatters at Art Center

Alissa Walker writes about design, architecture, travel and Los Angeles for publications like Fast Company, ReadyMade, Sunset, I.D., Print, Design Observer, Core77, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. She is the associate producer for the public radio show "DnA: Design and Architecture," hosted by Frances Anderton and a frequent collaborator with GOOD, most recently as co-curator, with Casey Caplowe, of a program called GOOD Design LA, where designers work with civic leaders to propose solutions to urban problems. With Haily Zaki and Marissa Gluck, she co-hosts the monthly party de LaB, which brings together designers and design fans living and working east of La Brea. Alissa lives in a royal blue house in Silver Lake where she throws ice cream socials, tends to a drought-tolerant garden, writes infrequently but obsessively on her blog, Gelatobaby, and relishes life in LA without a car. She can't wait to talk about gelato, design and change with all the new friends she's made at Big City Forum.
http://www.gelatobaby.com/

DESIGNMATTERS The world today faces challenges of unprecedented scale and complexity—including urban congestion, depleted natural resources, housing shortages and crises in education and healthcare. Solutions to these challenges increasingly require collaborations offering diverse approaches and perspectives. Because mankind lives in a designed world, designers are pivotal to the success of these collaborations. Public awareness of the importance of design beyond mere consumerism and style is rapidly growing, and design is now an equal partner with many enterprises, including business, medicine, science, technology and urban planning.

A college-wide initiative launched in 2001, Designmatters is a social impact program that embraces global engagement and projects of social relevance through design education. Through research, advocacy and action, Designmatters strives to engage students, faculty and staff in an ongoing exploration of the links between design and issues of social and humanitarian importance.

Presenting:
-Mariana Amatullo, Director Designmatters
-Sean Donohue, Director of Research, Humanities & Design Sciences
Full-Time Faculty Member, Media Design Graduate Program, Art Center
http://www.designmatters.artcenter.edu/index.php

Big City Forum is a project designed to push forth a creative cities agenda and help foster dialogue around sustainable creative communities. It seeks to link up the intersections, relationships, and shared interests between urban planning, economic development, education, architecture, art and design, cultural exchange, and community activism. Furthermore it hopes to help foster the idea of mapping creative spaces and places in which these conversations can take place. Potentially this web of dialogue can develop into an “idea lab” in which new collaborations, projects, actions can be shaped. Meetings are by invitation only and take place across Los Angeles, highlighting the efforts of cultural and community activism within the big city.