What: Traverse City Design Week
When: Oct. 4-11
Where: Various venues throughout the Grand Traverse region
Schedule and more info
Design is everywhere.
"From your remote control to how you're walking down the street — industrial design in the remote control, to civic design on the street," said Jessica Kooiman Parker, one of the organziers of the first Traverse City Design Week.
She and Dana Lacuesta are behind a weeklong celebration and gathering, running Oct. 4 through 11.
"It's a really big umbrella," Lacuesta said. "We didn't want to limit it to one facet of design. We wanted to bring together designers of all kinds."
Northern Michigan holds a lot of interesting examples of good design, the pair said.
Kooiman Parker pointed to Farm Club, a restaurant and working farm west of Traverse City.
"Farm Club, to me, is such a great example of northern Michigan design," she said. "Community oriented, culinary, of the land, and then the architecture ... to me that's kind of an exemplary space to be and to witness in our community."
Lacuesta looks to Northwestern Michigan College.
"There is a famous Bauhaus designer who designed the fine arts building there," she said.
Traverse City Design Week features a Bauhaus-style printmaking workshop, among its many events.
We couldn't resist asking Lacuesta and Kooiman Parker to lend their expert design eyes to our studio, which was designed and built in the early 1990s. Hear that, and the entire conversaiton, using the audio player above.
