Skip to Content

Stamps Design Salon at 2016 Detroit Design Festival

Ferrystinn
Inn on Ferry Street, photo by Kenny Karpov 

During the 2016 Detroit Design Festival, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design will host its inaugural Design Salon. From Friday, September 23 through Sunday, September 25, a group of invited guests from varied disciplines — philosophers, robotics engineers, critical designers, a futurist, a national NPR foreign correspondent, design theorists, interaction designers, and corporate researchers and strategists — will join Stamps design faculty Sophia Brueckner, Roland Graf, John Marshall, Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, Bruce M. Tharp, and Nick Tobier at the Inn on Ferry Street in Midtown Detroit.

The salon offers an intimate setting that brings together critical thinkers, do-ers, and makers from different fields to examine the implications of a thorny set of topics. This year, the salon will unpack the underlying tensions between design, ethics, and technology.

Unlike a conference or symposium, the salon is meant to provoke informal conversations across disciplines in a safe environment for conjecture, confusion, and speculation. The outcomes of the salon will be made available to the public through audio recordings and a salon website in early 2017.

2016 Salon participants include: 

  • Christy Mag Uidhir, Philosopher of Art & Aesthetics (University of Houston)
  • Jason Beaubien, National Global Health and Development Correspondent (NPR)
  • Anthony Dunne, Critical Design (Dunne and Raby / The New School)
  • Clive Dilnot, Professor of Design Studies (Parsons)
  • Stuart Candy, Futurist (OCADSAIC)
  • Alison J. Clarke, Professor of Design History and Theory (University of Applied Arts, Vienna)
  • Meena Krishnamurthy, Philosopher (University of Michigan)
  • Jill Dimon, Interaction designer-Activist (Sassafras Tech Collective)
  • David Bruemmer , Co-founder & Chief Technical Officer (5D Robotics)
  • Dan Chen, R&D Strategist (Johnson & Johnson)
  • Elise Valoe, Senior Researcher (Steelcase)