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Alok Sharma, project chair for Detroit Synergy.
The all-volunteer organization is helping to organize Pecha Kucha Night Detroit. Photo by Rio Scafone
Architect Derek Roberts says Pecha Kucha Night will provide a forum for Detroit creatives to meet, network and showcase their work. His Emerging Professionals Committee of the American Institute of Architects is co-organizer of the event. Photo by Rio Scafone
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Thursday, Aug. 21 at 8:20 p.m., Atwater Block Brewery, Detroit.
Dan Carmody, Eastern Market Corp., Detroit -- Urban planning, community development
Aimee Zoyes, ACI Marketing L.L.C., ACI Illustration, Birmingham -- Graphic design, marketing
Darin Daguanno, Inform Studio, Northville -- Architecture, sustainable design
April Wagner, Epiphany Studios, Pontiac -- Glass art
Cory Lavigne, Inform Studio -- Architecture, sustainable design
Chandra Moore -- Architecture
Erik Nordin, Detroit Design Center, Detroit -- Metal work, mixed media installations
Amy Palomar -- Photography
Scott Owsley -- Photography
Mary Rousseaux -- Painting
Julie Savage, Zaremba & Co., Davisburg -- Landscape design
Kerry Moore, Context Furniture MFG, Royal Oak -- Furniture design
Twenty slides. Twenty seconds each.
Pecha Kucha Night crosses the corporate PowerPoint presentation with speed dating. Each presenter displays 20 slides for 20 seconds each; you get 6 minutes and 40 seconds to perk interest.
Detroit is about to jump aboard an international phenomenon that was started in 2003 by Tokyo-based architects Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein of Klein Dytham Architects. The idea is to provide a forum for creatives to meet, network and showcase their work. Merely through word of mouth and the Internet, Pecha Kucha (which refers to the sound of conversation in Japanese) has spread virally to 132 cities worldwide.
“It’s about time we got the internationally recognized Pecha Kucha to Detroit,” said Derek Roberts, 31, who works in the Ann Arbor office of Atlanta-based Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture, and chair of the Emerging Professionals Committee of the American Institute of Architects Detroit chapter. “Most other major cities of the world have a Pecha Kucha Night. Even smaller cities like Cleveland have it.”
Cezanne Charles, 34, director of creative industries at ArtServe Michigan and co-director with her husband, John Marshall, of roofoftwo, a hybrid art and design practice, has attended Pecha Kucha nights in Glasgow, Scotland; Liverpool, England; and Manchester, England; and presented at one in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a result, her art and design company is working on a project with two architects, and she found two fine artists for a gallery show she organized in Lancaster, England.
“It’s a great way to get to ground quickly with an arts scene and begin participating in easy, accessible and fun ways,” Charles said.
Anyone interested in sampling what is happening in Detroit’s creative scene is welcome to attend Pecha Kucha Night: Detroit Volume 1 at 8:20 p.m., Aug. 21 at the Atwater Block Brewery at 237 Jos. Campau, Detroit. There is no charge. Guests may order from the restaurant, which serves wine and 15 to 20 beers brewed on site. Twelve creative people, representing architecture, urban planning, landscape design, graphic design, marketing, photography, fine art, metal work, furniture design and glass art, will present their work on PowerPoint (see info box for a list of presenters). The next Pecha Kucha event will be held on Nov. 25 then every three months thereafter, Roberts said.
Bringing creatives of multiple disciplines together will encourage collaboration, said Roberts, whose Emerging Professionals Committee is planning the event with Detroit Synergy, a nonprofit committed to helping people complete projects benefiting the city of Detroit.
“More and more, collaborative teams are the way to go,” said Roberts of Ann Arbor. “My expertise is to design the building, not to pick the art that goes inside.”
Collaboration also makes sense in architecture when the goal is to maximize environmentally sustainable design practices, he said. “Getting everyone involved in the project around the table as early as possible makes it easier,” he explained. Creative people also join forces in art and design collectives like Los Pistoleros, a Corktown group committed to deconstructing and reusing parts of abandoned buildings — Roberts is a member.
“What we do as architects isn’t done in a vacuum,” agreed Tracy Petrella, 30, a project designer with Fanning Howey Associates Inc. in Novi, and another member of the Pecha Kucha steering committee. “The idea of cross fertilization is very exciting.”
Architects and fine artists may work together to create installation-based gallery exhibitions and buildings decorated with outdoor public sculptures, said Petrella, who is helping publicize Pecha Kucha Night with e-mail blasts.
Announcements will be sent to 180 people on the AIA Emerging Professionals Committee and thousands on the Detroit Synergy e-mail list, as well as local universities and art-related venues, Petrella said. A press release was sent to the media.
James Willer, 32, an architect with Archive DS in Detroit, and another member of the Pecha Kucha steering committee, originally proposed bringing Pecha Kucha to Detroit a year ago. He heard about it through friends in Chicago.
“We researched how other cities were doing it — Seattle, San Francisco, Buffalo,” Willer said. We absolutely have the creative ideas and creative minds that outshine these cities.”
To use the Pecha Kucha name and get a page on the Web site, Detroit organizers needed to sign a one-page contract with Klein Dytham, Roberts said. The contract requires presenters to show 20 slides for 20 seconds each, starting at 8:20 p.m. There is no fee to host a Pecha Kucha Night, as long as there are at least four events a year. Until the architects teamed with Detroit Synergy in February, they didn’t think it would be possible to do that many events a year.
In the meantime, the young architects held an event with a similar format called Design 360 with 14 presentations in November.
“Our attendance figures were twice what we expected,” Petrella said. “We had 120 attendees and our small space at Woodward Avenue Brewers was packed to the gills. We really got the sense that young designers in the Detroit area were hungry for this type of interaction.”
Detroit Synergy, an all-volunteer organization with only a Web address, provides expertise to help people make their dream projects reality, said Alok Sharma, 28, the project chair for Detroit Synergy and a business analyst contracted with OtterBase Inc. in Grand Rapids. For Pecha Kucha, the organization is providing volunteers for the steering committee and helping with publicity. They also found the venue, the Atwater Block Brewery. The bar will provide space at no cost. Organizers hope to have between 100 and 200 guests.
The Pecha Kucha planners posted a notice on the Detroit Synergy Web site in early June, asking for applications from potential presenters, Roberts said. The submission deadline was July 11. Of 18 applicants, the steering committee selected 12 compelling presenters that would make for a varied, interdisciplinary evening. Applicants are free to reapply for future Pecha Kucha nights.
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