A Conversation on Architecture, Street Art, and the City

DESIGN OUTSIDE : Who Designs The City?
📍 Platform X, SEPTA Suburban Station Concourse
🗓️ Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 5:30 PM -7:30pm

There is a symbiotic and tense relationship between architecture and street art.  Sometimes they work beautifully together, sometimes it's a rebellious act of expression that feels inconsiderate to the property owner.  Who gets to decide when and how street art and the built enviroment coexist.  It feels long overdue that street art and grafitti are recognized for not only the artistic merit of the work, but also the fact that it documents culture and freedom of expression to critique culture, especially systems of power.  What is more powerful and feels more institutional than a building?

Yet there are rules, right? Maybe...everyone seems to agree that there are rules and there should be rules, but I'm not sure we're all in agreement about what the rules are. 

Join Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Conrad Benner, founder of Streets Department and longtime journalist, artist, and advocate for street art, for a conversation on the shared and contested ground between the design world and the street art world, and what each reveals about the city we build and the city we claim.