It is one in a series of lively and elegant evenings where architects, interior designers, and design enthusiasts gather for heady conversations about art, architecture, and aesthetics. Music mixed with drinks set the tone for introducing cool products amidst the backdrop of some of the hippest design showrooms each month. This is Designer Pages' groundbreaking idea for design enthusiasts in Chicago.
Introducing, ID Chicago, a common-interest group and Windy-City-sister to the immensely popular IDNY Meetup in Manhattan.
As you walk into the space, one could easily mistake the event for a fashion show, what with its attendees dressed in ubiquitous black outfits or brilliant colors on various sides of the spectrum. It's an unintentional meeting of fashion and architecture. However, appreciation for designed objects and spaces has not caught up fully with the level of appreciation a typical consumer would give, to say, a fashion designer or designer fashion: "This is one of the reasons why we started this group. We want to bring the level of design (acceptance and appreciation) to that (level) of fashion," says Rebecca Lewis, Marketing Director for Designer Pages, an architecture and design product source. Avi Flombaum, Co-founder and CTO of the user-generated online A+D product catalog, further brings up an interesting point, "Designer Pages launched our network of Meetups because we felt that design and designers deserve much more visibility and buzz. Coco Chanel is a household name among even 13 year old girls. Why don't they know about Florence Knoll?"
Iconic fashion designer Donna Karan of DKNY once said: "I love building spaces: architecture, furniture, all of it, probably more than fashion. The development procedure is more tactile. It's about space and form and it's something you can share with other people."
It is this idea of sharing with other people that led Designer Pages to participate in NeoCon® World's Trade Fair 2010 on June 14 - 16, 2010 at The Merchandise Mart Chicago. It is North America's largest exhibition of contract furnishings for the built environment.
Sharing in URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and IRL (In Real Life)
In 2009 at NeoCon, Designer Pages initiated a Citizen Blogger campaign. It was a guerrilla marketing effort that enlisted the help of local media-savvy design enthusiasts to engage exhibitors and fellow attendees in real-time conversations using Twitter. Again in 2010, these bloggers will metaphorically allow the walls to talk during the NeoCon event.
The "sharing-experience" will be elevated to the next level by real-life, back-to-earth discussion of Why The Social Web Matters In Architecture And Design led by panelists Jacob Slevin, Co-founder and CEO of Designer Pages New York, Avi Flombaum, Co-founder of Designer Pages New York, and Paul Petrunia, founder of Archinect in Los Angeles.
As communications and sharing experiences move to nanotechnology with increasing mobility, we
will begin to see built interior environments evolving. With the aid of
Quick-Response (QR) codes, it will give designed-space occupants an
augmented-reality-illusion of "walls that could talk". For now, take a moment to listen to what
these "real-time walls" have to say during NeoCon 2010.
NeoCon from neoconwtf on Vimeo.
Luis, AIA, RIBA, NCARB, LEED®AP, is principal architect at Atelier Lira Luis, LLC. She believes
in transforming the world and society through designs that are
sensitive to sustainability and address social responsibility. Follow
her in Twitter: @liraluis
or Get LinkedIn with
her. Chicagoans are invited to become Citizen Bloggers, sponsored by IIDA:
Filed under: AEC, Architecture and Planning, Design, Events, Interior Design, NeoCon, Social Media, Technology
Tags: AEC, Archinect, Avi Flombaum, Designer Pages, DKNY, Donna Karan, ID Chicago, IDNY, Jacob Slevin, Lira Luis, Merchandise Mart, NeoCon, Paul Petrunia
WOW
It's gonna be awesome!