The 2nd annual Detroit Design Festival (DDF) kicked off on Wednesday, with an opening night party at the historic Fisher Building, and a wide range of “happenings” to take place continuously or intermittently between September 19-23, at points of interest all over some of Detroit’s most popular neighborhoods.

With construction still in progress as of Wednesday, “a LOT of Space” promises to be an exciting installation, with activity centered around a magenta stage exhibiting three phases of creation, life and re-creation.

These events include design competitions, such as “Stick ‘Em Up” – a standoff of different designs created by arranging colorful Post-Its, available for viewing in storefronts between 1400-1500 Woodward Ave.; installations; film screenings; lectures, like Wednesday night’s lecture at CCS by artist Syd Mead, whose futuristic production and auto designs are on display in the Valade Family Gallery, within the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education on the CCS campus; performances; and many other events, detailed on the DDF website.

The exhibition space at CCS, housing scads of Syd Mead’s surreal, paleo-futuristic renderings of movie sets, vehicles and fantasy worlds.

A number of local businesses are involved, either as sponsors, hosts of happenings — such at the “Cups With A Purpose” installation at the Fourteen East Café, where patrons are invited to donate a dollar to decorate a recycled coffee cup, with proceeds to benefit Art Road, an organization that facilitates art classes in public schools that have lost funding for their art program. Still other businesses are design happenings in and of themselves, such as the recent addition to the Midtown Woodward strip, the new Great Lakes Coffee Bar, the interior of which drew heavily on resources provided by Reclaim Detroit, an organization that salvages wood from abandoned and dysfunctional structures around the city, recycling and repurposing those materials in beautiful new installations.

“Cups with a Purpose” at Fourteen East, helping art programs return to schools, and helping coffee shops maintain their reputation as the first and last bastion of the art movement.

The scene at Great Lakes Coffee Bar (roast master James Cadariu pictured second from left), where reclaimed meets recaffeinated.

Don’t miss your chance to explore and experience Detroit through the framework of its prodigious design history and the innovative art development taking place throughout the city. The official DDF hub of operations is the Michigan State University Parking garage on Woodward, just below Mack Ave. Open from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, there will be parking, art installations, shuttles, bike rentals and family friendly events. Come join the fun!