When Creators Convene, It’s All Eyes Toward the Future

Anyone who’s worked in a poorly lighted room or staggered out of a badly designed chair or wandered like a Kafka character through an ill-conceived building knows the value of good design. Design’s future both locally and internationally will be dissected Tuesday and Wednesday during the Pacific Design Center’s 26th annual Westweek. For design professionals and those interested in the topic, the two days of Westweek, which take place at the PDC, will introduce products and ideas from around the world through panel discussions, individual speakers and showroom exhibitions.

Panel discussions on both days will be held in the center’s SilverScreen Theater and broadcast on wide-screen TVs throughout the PDC. A discussion Wednesday of “The Role of Creativity in the Future of L.A.,” featuring such high-profile participants as architect Frank Gehry, artist Edward Ruscha, developer Tom Gilmore and MOCA design and architecture curator Brooke Hodge, among others, inevitably will be a big draw. The topic suggests that L.A.’s creativity is not all going into the entertainment industry. “Los Angeles is not the one-industry town we speak of,” says author Elizabeth McMillian, one of the panel’s moderators. “We’ve isolated 12 different industries that, taken together, bring the greatest number of jobs and income into the area.” Two other Wednesday panels are “Traditional Design in the 21st Century,” which explores how traditional design will evolve to keep up with the times, and “Illuminating the Future,” featuring lighting designers.

Tuesday’s panels include “Taking the Plunge: From Interior Designer to Furniture Manufacturer” and “Billy Baldwin: The Eternal Style of an American Modernist.” This slide presentation by Mitchell Owens, interior design director for Elle Decor, will trace Baldwin’s designs from the 1930s through the ‘70s. His clients included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Babe Paley and Nan Kempner.

Individual speakers include Susan S. Szenasy, editor in chief of Metropolis magazine and consulting editor of “Design IS” (Metropolis Books, Princeton Architecture Press, 2002). She will talk about SmartSkin, a concept that would allow buildings to sense environmental changes, feed shifts into a central computer and adjust energy use, temperature and air quality accordingly--something that Jules Verne might have envisioned. “It’s not a real product yet, just an idea induced by what we know of current technology,” says Szenasy, whose lecture is Tuesday in Studio Varenna by Poliform.

A series of talks by architects titled “L.A. Architects Speak!” will find Richard Landry, Ronald A. Altoon, Nicholas Roberts, Alex Ward, Douglas Hudson and Maureen Sullivan discussing the future of the built environment, specifically analyzing the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels downtown, the proposed Music Center renovation and the futuristic Gate Escape Cyberports at LAX. These talks will take place in the Blue Conference Center.

Featured showroom exhibitions are “Design France: Generation 2001,” which presents the latest in French design, and “diverCity ... conversations in design,” organized by the Southern California Institute of Architecture, which looks at how the school relates to its surroundings.

“Sweden by 6” displays six contemporary designers working in glass, wood, felt, metal, stone and porcelain. The innovative “h” furniture by Caroline Schlyter, made of bent laminated birch, has won acclaim in her native Sweden.

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Westweek is designed for the trade, but organizers say that anyone interested in design will not be turned away. No registration is necessary. For information, call (310) 657-0800 or visit www.p-d-c .com.