This year’s Metropolis Conference at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, in New York, featured a cast of “design entrepreneurs” who are reinventing their practices through creative approaches to the new economy. Even if you couldn’t make it to the daylong conference, you’re still in luck: video of the complete event is now available. Watch the one-minute teaser above for a quick look at a few of the speakers’ presentations, and keep scrolling for the conference schedule with links to all of the videos. Read more…

A computer-generated rotation of the atrium at 41 Cooper Square

The moment people start talking about “paradigm shifts” in any profession, you can be sure there’s some big, disturbing change on its way. One thing was clear at last night’s “Shifting Paradigms: Design in Transition” event at the Center for Architecture, in New York: the digital age is about to hit architecture on the head with a knuckle duster. The proliferation of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software has already changed the way architects communicate with builders and clients; now it may force design professionals to find new ways to validate their very existence. Read more…

Click the play button to watch our executive editor, Martin C. Pedersen, explain how a 1961 New York City zoning ordinance led to a profusion of “crappy little parks” in his Yorkville neighborhood. (Click here to watch the two previous installments of “My Banal Neighborhood.”)

In our June issue, Ken Shulman writes about the up-and-coming design duo Antenna Design, and discusses its recent collaboration with Knoll. Antenna Workspaces is not only Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa’s first furniture-design project, it is also probably their “biggest job yet.” If you were suitably intrigued by the photographs that accompanied that feature, here’s a video (from the folks over at Cool Hunting) where you can see Antenna Workspaces in all its glory, and hear the “intense listeners” talk about the process of creating it.

In the June issue of Metropolis (which we’ll be posting online next week) Belinda Lanks writes about Santiago Calatrava’s recent design of five stage sets for the New York City Ballet’s spring season. In this short film, Calatrava and several of the NYCB’s choreographers talk about this uncommon collaboration between architecture and dance.

We’ve written about Katie Salen’s game-design initiatives a couple of times in recent years—in “The Principals of Play” (2006) and “Learning, a New Game” (2009)—so, naturally, we were interested to see Salen answer a few questions about her practice in a video interview posted last week on the Big Think. Check out the full video above.

In the interview, Salen also mentions the “slow games” that she and some of her colleagues created in 2006 for the 25th anniversary issue of Metropolis. “What, we wondered, would it mean to design a game that takes 25 years to play?” Salen and Nick Fortungo wrote in the issue. Click here to download a PDF of the four “conceptual exercises” they came up with—two of which, Salen says, are still open to new players.
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The National Mall owes much to the architectural legacy of Daniel Burnham. The McMillan Commission, which planned the Mall in 1901, was inspired by the City Beautiful movement that Burnham sparked off with his design of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago. So it is fitting that the National Mall will be the venue of the Washington, D.C., premiere of a PBS documentary on Burnham, Make No Little Plans. The film was produced by The Archimedia Workshop, in consultation with Kartemquin Films, and will be screened at 8:30 p.m. this Wednesday, June 9, on the Mall at 4th Street. You can watch more clips from the documentary here.

As you may have read in the New York Times the other day, Metropolis’s editor in chief, Susan Szenasy, was one of several design mavens to comb the recent ICFF in search of the very best products for the annual ICFF Editors Awards. This year, Szenasy toted along a Flip video camera for part of her rounds. Click the play button for a sample of her unofficial ICFF video diary; to watch the full videos, visit our Multimedia page.

Related: We also produced show-floor videos on Tom Dixon’s Flash Factory, Emily Pilloton’s Design Revolution Road Show, and Artek’s Dress the Chair demonstration.

On Saturday morning, Tom Dixon sat down with us in one of the three booths that his team occupies at the front of the ICFF hall. A few feet away, American students dressed as factory workers were busy assembling a pair of limited-edition Dixon designs that could be purchased on site—part of his Flash Factory project, which debuted in Milan last month. Also fresh from Milan: the Industry collection of seating and lighting, on display in the Dixon booth proper. Click the play button for the designer’s thoughts on his new collection, the problems with the furniture business, and the benefits of the global recession.

Video shot and edited by Eve Dilworth; interview and text by Mason Currey.

Our executive editor may have been mesmerized by Naoto Fukasawa’s Shelving System for Artek, but I’d wager that most people passing by the venerable Finnish manufacturer’s booth are more caught up in the live upholstery demonstration being staged there during the fair. Click the play button to watch Artek’s design director, Ville Kokkonen, explain the company’s Dress the Chair campaign.

Video shot and edited by Eve Dilworth; text by Mason Currey