The familiar purview of design as it relates to the built environment is the making of space in a material and experiential sense. This shaping of physical urban form is the accumulated product of a range of disciplinary capacities and expertise – architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, engineering, fine arts and communication design among many others. Professional capacity, in this context, is most often deployed in response to the explicit demands or implicit desires of a client or program, characterizing design primarily as a responsive, service-based method.

However, one can discern an emerging momentum within contemporary design praxis that is challenging the accepted client-service-based format of professional practice in favor of more nimble, savvy, resilient and aggressive modes of operation that enhance and expand the cultural potency and agency of design. Within these non-traditional formats of practice, the idea of design making space has shifted from solely a material practice toward a focus on the generation of unique platforms from which design can engage society and culture in a projective, anticipatory way – making space to operate; making space to engage; making space to profit; making space to affect change; making space to grow; making space to advocate; making space to change the conversation – and ultimately, making space for design.

Making Space is a 2-day symposium held at PennDesign in Philadelphia that curates an interchange between these expanded practices in order to frame new agendas; articulate new strategies; establish new priorities; and orient new connectivities capable of generating new, catalytic platforms for design.