City pols announce NYCxDesign, first ever NYC design exposition
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the mayor’s office announced plans today for the city’s first design exposition, NYCxDesign (NYC by Design).
The event’s planners aim to showcase the city’s architecture, graphic design, fashion, manufacturing, industrial, and landscape and urban design communities.
“There are so many designers who are in the city — people who are not just designing but making, and really taking things to the next level through technology — and yet we’re not really known for this industry,” said Susan Chin, Executive Director at New York Design Trust and one of the event’s planners.
Produced by the City Council in collaboration with a 33-person Steering Committee comprised of local politicians, city agencies, and creative heads of major companies and institutions including John & Johnson, the Museum of Modern Art and The New School, the event is set to be an annual occurrence in the city and hopes to gain world-wide attention.
“Other cities around the world celebrate design in such a big way and it brings in so much money to those cities,” explained American Design Club’s Kiel Mead, an artist and event-organizer on the steering committee. “Design is such a huge thing in New York City and yet that potential is pretty much untapped.”
“It will really help to put us on the same stage as London or Milan or Tokyo and other global cities that are known for design,” Chin added.
New York City is home to 33 percent more design firms than Los Angeles, according to the Center for an Urban Future.
The event is partly geared at helping younger designers who “don’t always have access to the market and places to sell their things,” Chin said.
Mead believes “the responsibility of the people in the steering committee [is] to make [design week] good for emerging talent.”
“We have all these creative people who are busy in their studios creating objects, making things, and they need to be there, it shouldn’t be their 100 percent responsibility to sell themselves, they should have help,” Mead said. “That’s why I applaud the city for creating this event.”
NYCxDesign will take place in all five boroughs from Friday, May 10 through Tuesday, May 21, bookended by the Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island and International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Center.
Members of the design community interested in participating can register individual events at www.nycxdesign.com.
Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter at @danielleiat
