Vancouver’s design community throws open the doors May 12 to 14.

Vancouver Design Week (VDW) returns this year after a 2016 hiatus in a new format: three jam-packed days of engaging design events throughout the city May 12 to 14, with the goal of reminding Vancouverites just how vibrant the local design community is…and how important design can be to our city.”Design can always create awareness and address social issues and bring them to light,” says VDW co-founder and Cause and Affect managing director Jane Cox. “Vancouver has long flown under the radar so this is our chance to connect the community.””We’re at this very special point where Vancouver is ready to be recognized globally,” notes fashion designer Nicole Bridger, who will be hosting an in-studio presentation during VDW. “There’s this recipe of interesting, relevant, conscious things happening here.”Following the launch party May 12 in the festive pink-and-yellow Alley Oop alley (complete with snacks from Roaming Dragon and drinks on tap from Faculty Brewing), open studios and building tours will run Saturday and Sunday. The host venues are conveniently clustered—Saturday morning’s schedule features all Strathcona and Railtown spaces, while the afternoon is centralized closer to Downtown, and Sunday events all take place south of False Creek—so it should prove easy to wander from one to the other on a self-directed design crawl. Pop into the Patkau Architects studio or Yew Woodshop, take a tour of Telus Garden led by Hernriquez Partners Architects, or sip a Pantone-inspired Tealeaves tea cocktail at the #PaletteForYourPalate event at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.This fall, VDW will formally join the World Design Week Network and in 2018, will re-expand its offerings to a full week of events.See the full schedule and map for Vancouver Design Week 2017 here.