A weeklong festival celebrating multiple facets of design is returning to Portland this weekend with hundreds of events, tours, educational opportunities and workshops. Design Week Portland, now in its seventh year, will include a wide swath of programming encompassing practices including architecture, landscape, interior and urban design.

This year, however, things have changed. The conclusion of the week’s events will also serve as the start of year-round programming on the part of Design Portland, the nonprofit organization that created and runs Design Week.

“Basically, we just found ourselves doing a lot of the work that we would do in concentrated form before the festival,” said Tsilli Pines, president of the newly rebranded Design Portland. “It felt like the community was asking us to do more of that in between, so the idea was just to formalize what we were doing in the background. It was a response to popular demand.”

Design Week Portland 2019 is offering hundreds of workshops, charrettes and other interactive events during the coming week, starting with an opening party Saturday evening at the Jupiter Next hotel. From there, more than 350 more events will be held through Saturday, April 13.

Design Week tends to capture the design trends of the moment, meaning themes and direction shift from year to year.  A number of events this year are focused on emerging technologies including augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

One event, “Humans, AI and the Future of Transportation,” will feature a panel of experts in AI and transportation technology discussing changes in transportation design as AI becomes more capable.  At “Democratizing VR for More Livable Cities,” attendees will be able to explore VR models before a panel discussion on ways to use the technology as a community resource.

“Every year we kind of put out a call for the most interesting things happening in everyone’s domain,” Pines said. “And we’re not really very heavy-handed with a theme or something we’re calling for. Largely what we try to do is put an open call out to see what is bubbling up.”

A select list of notable events is below, and the full schedule is available at . 91��Ƶ are open to the public and include many free and low-cost options.

Saturday, April 6:
Opening Party, 7-11 p.m., Jupiter Next, 900 E. Burnside St.; $10.

Sunday, April 7:
Restorative Design: The Confluence Bird Blind by Maya Lin, 10-12 p.m., The Sandy River Delta, Troutdale, OR; $10.
Walking Tour: South Portland: Design, Development, Displacement, 2-4 p.m., Corner of Southwest First Avenue and Arthur Street; $30.
Kenton Women’s Village 2.0 Open House, 2:30-4:30 p.m., Corner of North Argyle Way and Columbia Boulevard; free.

Monday, April 8:
Accessible Design: Empathy in a World with No Averages, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Phase2, 514 N.W. 11^th Ave., Ste. 203; $15.
Women + The Future, an immersive experience in AR and VR with an all-female panel, 6-8 p.m., 52 Limited, 135 N.E. Ninth Ave.; $35.
New Tols for Interior Designers: Reimagining the Handmade Rug, 6-8 p.m., Lapchi Rug Design Studio, 809 N.W. Flanders St.; free.

Tuesday, April 9:
Next UI: Understanding the Business Case for Augmented Reality, 8-10 a.m., OSU College of Business, 555 S.W. Morrison St., Boardroom #2002; $30.
Placemaking for a Sustainable Future, 5-7 p.m., EYELEVEL, 1615 S.E. Third Ave., Fourth Floor; $5.
Democratizing VR for More Livable Cities, 5-8 p.m., Open Signal, 2766 N.E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd; $15.
Transportation as Liberation, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Vestas, 1417 N.W. Everett St.; $35/$10.

Wednesday, April 10:
Designing Equity – Leveraging the AIA Guides for Equitable Practice, 3-7 p.m., AIA Center for Architecture, 403 N.W. 11^th Ave.; $5.
What’s the Future of O’Bryant Square?, 5-7 p.m., Hennebery Eddy Architects, 921 S.W. Washington St., Ste. 250; free.
Humans, AI and the Future of Transportation, 6-8 p.m., Particle Design, 1001 S.E. Water Ave., Ste. 490; $15.

Thursday, April 11:
Technology and Livability: Designing Cities for the Future, 8:30-10 a.m., White Stag Building, 70 N.W. Couch St.; free.
Pre-Panelization and Virtual Design: The Creative and Practical Implications of Offsite Fabrication, 2-5 p.m., Portland Design Studio, 2609 S.E. 6^th Ave.; $10.
She Built This City: The Women of PDX Design and Architecture, 2-5 p.m., The Eleanor, 1605 N.W. Everett St.; free.

Friday, April 12:
Walking Tour: Mid-Century Modern and Minimalism in Portland, 11-1 p.m., Northeast corner of Southwest Third Avenue and Oak Street; $30.
Who Gets to Decide?, schoolchildren get to design the city through their eyes, 3:15-5:30 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, 4906 N.E. Sixth Ave.; free.

Saturday, April 13:
Walking Tour: Designing Death, River View Cemetery, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., 0300 S.W. Taylor’s Ferry Road; $30.
AIA Portland Homes Tour, 10-4 p.m., locations throughout Portland; $45.
Walking Tour: Albina: Design, Development, Displacement, 2-4 p.m., Northeast Williams Avenue and Russell Street; $30 full price/ free subsidized tickets.

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Design Week Portland, an annual festival that starts Friday, offers a different perspective in 2017. The headquarters for this year is The Redd, at 831 S.E. Salmon St., while the event’s traditional home, Pioneer Courthouse Square, is being renovated.

“We have to work harder to draw the crowd than in the past,” Design Week Director Tsilli Pines said. “At Pioneer Square, we drew 10,000 people, but a lot of those just happened to be at the square. We expect about 5,000 people over the week to attend events.”

The six-year-old event will include nearly 25 sessions touching on topics in specialties including architecture, graphic design and fashion. One of the biggest challenges for attendees often is figuring out exactly what to check out.

“Any design discipline you can think of, it’s in there,” Pines said. “People get a little overwhelmed. We try to provide sample itineraries so that people can see a curated list of things that are in the area they want to know about. We have ambassadors with print programs that list things more concisely. They can help people figure out what is going on.”

Event organizers will also have an itinerary listing local design professionals’ plans. That way people can see what is most interesting to professionals in a given area.

“There is pretty good representation,” Pines said. “We draw a lot of students and design directors. It’s a pretty diverse crowd.”

Many of the presentations and displays at event headquarters will focus on a proposed green loop around Portland. There will also be TED-style talks and panel discussions on a variety of subjects.

“We are going to have five things a day,” Pines said. “We also will have a main stage where we will have 24 talks. The content is a little more centered around things that are happening and the changing climate that architects are working in.”

Sustainability will be a major theme of many Design Week events.

“Every year we have sustainable action discussions,” said Josh Cabot, senior job captain at SERA Architects. “We thought this was a good chance to pair our sustainable action discussions with Design Week.”

SERA Architects will host a panel discussion, called Endurant Design, focusing on the ability to maintain resilience while undergoing stressors. Cabot said participants will break into smaller groups to focus on more specific concepts like urban change and ways to get neighborhoods to use resources most effectively. A big focus will be on the Old Town neighborhood where SERA Architects’ offices sit.

“We have been in Old Town since 1968,” Cabot said. “It will be fun to have everyone talk about Old Town. It will be sort of a visioning session, letting people dig into and focus on the area around Old Town.”

Also, a series of more than 100 open houses will take place in different sections of the city over the course of the week. Various design companies will hold panel discussions and seminars about items of interest in the design community.

“We really liked the idea of having a panel about the life span of design,” said Olivia Guethling, marketing director at Works Progress Architecture.

The firm’s roundtable, called Design (Im)permanence, will explore the perception that design values change while the objects that designers work on largely stay the same.

91��Ƶ like Design Week give architects a chance to discuss concepts that they don’t get to ordinarily, Guethling said.

“In the day to day, we don’t have the space to have those conversations,” she said. “That is a neat opportunity here.”

More information is available at .

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Design Week Portland, which kicks off Friday and runs through April 23, is about as multifaceted as an event can be.

With about 100 open houses, scores of events and exhibits, and two days of speeches and activities at Pioneer Courthouse Square, there’s something for just about anyone interested in design.

In fact, for many attendees, the toughest part of the weeklong celebration may be trying to decide which of the myriad offerings to include on one’s calendar.

Luckily, we at the 91��Ƶ have done some homework to help you decide.

Begin at the beginning

The best place to start might be at the heart of the celebration, Design Week’s headquarters at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

In addition to a roster of workshops and live entertainment at the square from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., April 18-22, festival organizers have a slew of surprises, Design Week director Tsilli Pines said. The square will be transformed into a sort of map of the city and covered with wooden “trees” – wooden poles with protruding dowel rods – to represent Portland’s neighborhoods, she said.

In one of several domes that will be set up in the area, festival-goers will be invited to fill out cards with wishes and visions for their neighborhoods. The cards will serve as “leaves” that can then be hung on the “trees.”

“We want to capture this documentation because it’s basically citizen input,” Pines said. “We’re focused this year on ways for the public to have a voice and for the public to engage with us. It’s the most democratic part of our programming.”

Something to talk about

Although most Design Week Festival events won’t start until Monday, Revolution Hall will play host on Saturday and Sunday to a range of design-focused talks, including one by Craig Dykers, the founding partner of Snohetta. The firm, which is based in Oslo, Norway, and New York City, is handling design of the James Beard Public Market as well as the Willamette Falls Legacy Project.

Most of the events and workshops planned for next week will be free or charge a small fee, but because of overhead expenses and presenter stipends, tickets for the two-day “talks” event will cost $395 for general admission and $295 for students.

While Dykers is a main draw, Pines said she expects a talk by Portland State University professor Ethan Seltzer to also draw quite a bit of attention.

Seltzer said he plans to use his presentation to illustrate that the notion of “best practices” doesn’t always work.

“When it comes to planning and coping with change in this region we’ve got to be thinking less about best practices and more about making this place the best place it can be,’ he said. “What this place becomes is really in large part up to us.”

People looking for a less pricey way to kick off the festival this weekend may want to check out Revolution Hall for the festival’s opening party, on Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m. Tickets for the party run $10 per person, and attendees will have an opportunity to examine several displays featuring the design work of more than a dozen local creative companies, from agencies to startups.

Portlanders looped in

The future of Portland’s Green Loop, a six-mile pedestrian and bicycle urban promenade, will take a giant step forward next week when the winner of the Loop PDX design competition will finally be announced.

Thirty-eight entries were submitted by designers from around the world for the competition, which was created through a collaboration of the University of Oregon’s John Yeon Center for Architecture, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Parks and Recreation, and other landowners and stakeholders.

Those entries have since been narrowed down to five finalist designs, which will be presented by their creators during a pitch party on Monday, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 N.W. 10th Ave. Admission is $10.

A panel of judges will select an overall design winner, who will receive a $20,000 prize and a chance to see his or her design become a reality in the city.

“The bottom line is that somebody will walk away with $20,000 to further develop their proposals,” said Randy Gragg, director of the Yeon Center. “But this will be a long process, over many years, and we want to bring fresh ideas to the table.”

Independent events

One of Design Week’s most impressive exhibits will be one by Snohetta showcasing its design processes; it recently appeared at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen. The hands-on, walk-through display will demonstrate “the relationships between people, processes and their projects in an exhibit format.”

The exhibit will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., starting Monday and continuing through June, at the Center for Architecture at 403 N.W. 11th Ave. It will occupy more than 5,000 square feet, said Robert Hoffman, executive director of the American Institute of Architects’ Portland chapter.

Hoffman said the exhibit is the largest ever staged at the center and that it is “really ingenious” in the way it takes people through the design process.

“We looked at it and said this is very much the kind of thing we want to happen in the Center for Architecture, because this is design for everybody,” he said.

Best made plans

With so many activities and offerings from which to choose, folks can easily become overwhelmed.

For people looking to tap into the opinions of experts tied into the local design scene, the Design Week website offers a look at itineraries hand-picked by area design professionals. Holst Architecture principal Dave Otte, for example, plans to attend the opening party, see the Snohetta exhibit, check out the Loop PDX design competition and take part in the AIA Portland Homes Tour.

Also, Design Week organizers have a solution for people seeking some help picking and choosing a festival plan. Simply head back to Pioneer Courthouse Square and corral one of the festival’s roving ambassadors, who Pines said will be happy to provide information and answer any questions.

“Our ambassadors will help them understand all of (their) options,” she said. “It’s a way for people feeling overwhelmed by the festival to get some guidance.”

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