Exhibitions showcase city's design industry

Think Philly's got nothing going for it? Think again.

Design Philadelphia has been showcasing Philadelphia's local talent in the applied arts for the past two weeks, with over 60 events.

It aims to give a platform for the city's designers, especially for the young and vibrant designers that Philly seems to specialize in.

And Penn is at the heart of the event, organizing a variety of events including exhibitions, talks and contributing student work to an exhibition in Center City.

Design Philadelphia is in its third year of publicizing the work of Philadelphia's design industry. Co-founder Hilary Jay, also the director of The Design Center at Philadelphia University, says the event is doing better than ever.

"Every year, the events get stronger and more interesting," Jay said.

Those events range from hard-hat tours of Philadelphia's new Symphony House, a skyscraper in Center City, to cocktail receptions at America's oldest auction house, Freeman's, located on the 1800 block of Walnut Street.

The main role of Design Philadelphia is to gain publicity for the city's vibrant design scene, which is gaining a feeling of its own, Jay explained.

"What's nice is we've got seven schools in this area which turn out a lot of designers," and that gives Philadelphia design a more experimental, youthful quality, he said.

And many of the designers who come out of those schools choose to stay in Philadelphia. Alejandro Biguria, who graduated from Penn last year, said roughly half his class at PennDesign had chosen to stay in the city.

Biguria himself has stayed and is now working at local architecture firm Ballinger.

The opportunities in Philly are what kept him here, along with fact that the work available is "very design oriented - there's a lot of creativity involved," more so than in some other design scenes like New York and Los Angeles.

Because Philadelphia's design industry is less established, it is more attractive to young people, said Adrienne Yancone, another Penn graduate from 2006.

"There are more opportunities to realize your ideas," Yancone said.

At the same time, Philadelphia has a few well-established designers such as Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, which built Penn's own Perelman Quadrangle.

Design Philadelphia aims not just to publicize and entertain those in the industry but also to make design a part of everyone's life.

Design Philadelphia "brings design into the consciousness of people who don't necessarily think about it - it wakes them up a bit," Jay said.

Penn's principal contribution this year has been in the field of architecture, with students contributing work to Design Philadelphia's flagship exhibition, entitled "Reinvention: circles, squares and the city grid."

The events come to the close on April 22.

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