Philadelphia Magazine: Movers and Shapers, September 2008
A Who’s Who of DesignPhiladelphia
DesignPhiladelphia began in 2005 with a single goal: to create an exhibition to show off the work of students from the city’s seven colleges with design departments — Penn, Drexel, Temple, the University of the Arts, Moore College, the Art Institute and Philadelphia University. But then word got out. And what started as a small project turned into a citywide design extravaganza, with 50 different participants — architects, interior designers, retailers, product designers — jubilant to show their work, meet other designers, talk about design, just be in the vicinity of Philly’s design scene. Last year, some 160,000 people attended the festival’s 63 (mostly free) events.
This year, hundreds of local designers will host symposia, open studios, installations, parties and exhibits in 90 events from October 16th to 22nd. Even for Philadelphians oblivious to design, the festival will be hard to miss. The theme is, not surprisingly, green — “Down to Earth” — and there will be at least one installation outside on Broad Street — actually on the street. “We expect double or triple the audience this year,” says DesignPhiladelphia project manager Beth Van Why. “Which is great for the designers, who want to show off what they do and finally have a chance to, even though no client is paying them.”
Muller and Thornburg are the bon vivants of the city’s design community. Their parties and openings feel a bit like one of Muller’s imaginative, sprawling chandeliers, with bright, jumbled masses of disparate entities — vintage glassware, milk crates, and in one case, a Mini Station Wagon — coalescing around a single hub, the couple’s showroom/workshop in South Kensington. Thornburg is an interior designer with a penchant for art and bright modern spaces; Muller, originally from New York, moved to Philly in the late ’60s to attend the University of the Arts (then Philadelphia College of the Arts), and stayed because it felt right. “I found it was a real fertile ground in which to develop myself as an artist, and it still is,” says Muller.
Best known for: Muller’s chandeliers, which hang in Tony Goldman’s Philadelphia Building, in the restaurant Supper, and at the Stonewall Golf Club in Lancaster County, which Thornburg decorated.
What they’re doing this year: Feting Wink, a coffee-table collection of Muller’s light sculptures, with a book-release party at the studio.
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/movers_and_shapers/page12