From tech inventions to culture changing products, human-centred design, emerging fashion to international architecture, San Francisco Design Week offers the opportunity to experience unique design talents, impacts and innovations.
From tech inventions to culture changing products, human-centred design, emerging fashion to international architecture, San Francisco Design Week offers the opportunity to experience unique design talents, impacts and innovations. Spanning from Silicon Valley to the city of San Francisco, the festival comprises more than 60 studio tours and 100 events, featuring world-renowned designers, entrepreneurs and innovative thought leaders.
Dawn Zidonis, executive director of AIGA San Francisco, the professional association for design behind San Francisco Design Week, discusses the festival’s participation in Destination at Dubai Design Week and highlights the three local brands that it’s bringing to Dubai to showcase on the international stage as part of the initiative.
How did San Francisco Design Week become involved in the Destination initiative?
San Francisco Design Week is involved in the international design week leadership community, which meets a few times a year to discuss collaboration. While attending a World Design Week Summit in Tokyo last fall, we met Dubai Design Week’s, Cyril Zammit, and discussed ways to work together. After meeting up again in Milan, we received an invitation to participate in this event.
How did you select your brands? What were the characteristics you were looking for?
We wanted brands that represented the unique design culture in San Francisco. We love the outdoors, even though the temperature is mild, so Galanter and Jones heated outdoor furniture with a modern twist was the perfect match. Lumio’s playful lighting fixtures summed up our attitude towards living a life in California and Council’s design aesthetic drives home our belief in form and function.
Can you summarise in a few sentences what the design scene in San Francisco is like?
San Francisco is an international city with designers from all over the world, so I wouldn’t say we have a specific design style. Designers here often use materials that reflect the natural landscape, the ocean, the bay, the mountains and forests.
It is a community steeped deeply in social impact and sustainability, with diverse designs that run the gamut of ground breaking technology all the way to the resurgence of the maker movement, stepping away from the computer and making things by hand.
What are looking forward to seeing and experiencing in Dubai?
We’re looking forward to immersing ourselves in the design scene and taking it all in, as well as meeting the city’s design community.