DesignPhilly Launches Free Lecture Series

Expanding beyond their annual October design festival, DesignPhiladelphia has partnered with the University of the Arts to host Visibly Invisible: Start Seeing What’s Hiding in Plain Sight, a four-part series of public lectures focusing on a mash-up of history, design and technology.

Led by four different super-smart cultural provocateurs, each lecture aims to challenge the way see our everyday systems and surroundings. If you have any interest in design whatsoever, you should definitely consider checking one out.

The lectures will all take place on a Tuesday from 6 p.m-7:30 p.m at Hamilton Hall (320 S. Broad St.) and require you to register in advance. Here’s the complete line-up:

February 7th

From Parlor to iPhone: Our Gadgets, Our Identities

Award-winning design historian, Regina Lee Blaszczyk explores the hidden meanings of the things we use every day. Her whirlwind tour of 150 years of consumer culture highlights the invisible links between the Victorian parlor and the I-want-it-now culture of Apple, Facebook and Twitter. Our ancestors used “cultural hardware” like furniture and bric-a-brac to express themselves, while we use “cultural software” like eBooks, videogames, and apps to create personal space.

February 21st

Hide and Seek

Founder of Hidden City Philadelphia—festival, online magazine, tour company—Thaddeus Squire will address the yearning for history in pop culture: from the prison fantasies of Piranesi to Mayan expedition drawings, and Indiana Jones, National Treasure and Tomb Raider. And from the retro-chic of Restoration Hardware and Anthroplogie to online gaming, and the emerging photo genre of “ruin porn.”

March 20th

Revealing the Obvious

Mad App Alchemist and internationally recognized designer and photographer, Dan Marcolina is author of the critically acclaimed book and iPad series “iPhone Obsessed.” He will expose how the combination of picture choice and multiple app processing can transform everyday snapshots into remarkable statements.

April 3rd

Design with the other 90%: Cities

With her recent exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the United Nations, Cynthia E. Smith helped spark international dialogue on the opportunities to utilize technology and design to help poorer communities “leapfrog” into the 21st century. Traditionally designers had focused on the 10 percent of the population that could afford their goods and services. Now, a new wave of designers, architects and engineers is working to solve the world’s most critical problems as urban populations in the developing world grow at unprecedented rates.