In order to get us inspired and excited for this year’s festival, we partnered with CreativeMornings PHL for their February talk themed “Touch.” Unlike sight or sound, touch cannot be conveyed across distance through screens and speakers. Touch invites us to slow down, pay attention, and come closer. 

Public art and design installations can touch our minds, evoke emotion, spark curiosity, and promote awareness about important issues. We wanted to connect the theme of “touch” to the design world and hear from someone who helps create one of the nation’s largest public exhibitions, The Philadelphia Flower Show. 

Seth Pearsoll has been one of the leading creative forces responsible for curating the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show. He guides designers and businesses through their creative process as they conceptualize their individual garden installation, while connecting the entire experience together through the annual Flower show theme. 

The installations and exhibits at the Flower Show are much more than just visual spectacles. They educate visitors by helping them understand and appreciate the natural world, while also demonstrating how green space is vital for thriving urban communities. 

Listening to Seth’s talk and experiencing the Flower Show each year, we see the similarity between the Flower Show and the installations and exhibits during DesignPhiladelphia at our Festival Hubs and across the city. Both can be breathtaking spectacles....but both also engage and educate the public on issues close to our respective missions.

One of the key features of the DesignPhiladelphia Festival is our public design installations throughout Cherry Street Pier and at the Center for Architecture and Design. These installations range from large-scale immersive to interactive exhibits and displays that are designed to inspire and engage the public in new and exciting ways. 

As always, we are excited to see how our design community will show off and out this year during the festival. We hope folks continue to be inspired by the excellent creative work happening in Philly, like Seth and his team’s work during the Flower Show. Congrats to PHS for another great show…looking forward to seeing you during the DesignPhiladelphia Festival this year, from October 4-15, 2023!