Pecha Kucha Night : 6.6 minutes of fame

By Murrye Bernard

Young designers don’t have to relegate their work to portfolios or as decor for their apartment walls: Pecha Kucha Night (PKN), as profiled in November’s Record News [page 38; and archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/
061101forum.asp], provides a forum in which everyone from architects to students and recent graduates is welcome to present their work (in 20 seconds per slide with a 20-slide limit). “It may be a newly finished building, it may be a new project, a new piece of furniture, a new event, a new idea, something you want to share with everyone,” explains the PKN Web site (pecha-kucha.org).

Photo courtesy of Scott Rodwin

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for the sound of conversation) Night has become a global “happening” that
draws large crowds of design-savvy individuals wherever it occurs, as at a Tokyo gathering (above).

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PKN is currently held in more than 40 cities and will soon begin in Austin, Texas; Atlanta and Indianapolis; and abroad, in Marseille, Barcelona, Seville, Udine, Hong Kong, and Lagos. “New cities launch Pecha Kucha Night events normally when a local designer or architect [in] that area has attended or read about Pecha Kucha Night and has realized that their own city needs something similar,” explains Jenny Brown of Klein Dytham Architecture, the firm that founded the event. The designers then contact partners Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, and after a short discussion and a “handshake agreement,” Klein and Dytham work with the designers to set up the first event. No money is exchanged: PKN is nonprofit. “Most of the organizers run it out of their love and passion for design, and it is this passion that gives it the energy that has fueled its growth so far,” says Brown.

Herman Ellis Dyal, C.E.O. of the Austin-based environmental graphic design firm FD2S, is organizing and identifying presenters for Austin’s first Pecha Kucha event. He explains that the emphasis is on emerging talent and includes related design professions. “I consider architecture to be the foundation of the program, but we’re broadening it to include graphic art, fine art, advertising, and other disciplines.” Dyal is working with others to handle logistics, including venues, which vary by city. Klein and Dytham encourage organizers to find unusual spaces in which to hold PKN. Often a low entrance fee covers expenses. Publicity also varies in each city, but typically spaces are filled by word of mouth, since PKN is as much a social event as a networking opportunity. What better combination than alcohol and architecture?

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