Stamps Design Salon at 2016 Detroit Design Festival

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 (OCAD / SAIC)
• 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)