Friday
18
🎤: Main Stage Talks
🌿: In the Wild
🎉: Parties & Events
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Forget everything you know about conferences.
Start the conference by grounding in place. A welcome to the land led by Skyler Lomahaftewa, a member of the Ute Tribe, invites us to acknowledge the history, presence, and living relationship to the land we gather on. The welcome will be followed by opening remarks from the Aspen Design Conference founders at the historic Paepcke Park gazebo, officially setting the weekend in motion.
Location:
Paepcke Park Gazebo -
Is beauty simply a matter of taste, or are there enduring patterns that shape how humans perceive the world? Through striking examples from architecture, biology, and the natural environment, architect Erik Evens explores how the forms and rhythms found in nature have guided human design across cultures and centuries. Drawing connections between natural systems and the built world, he asks whether beauty is less a cultural invention than a language we instinctively recognize — and what we stand to gain by rediscovering it.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House -
Invitations to let your mind, body, and spirit wander.
Pick a card, any card.
Location:
Aspen Collective Gallery -
An exploration of what it means to build technology that serves human agency rather than exploits it. In a conversation spanning AI, digital infrastructure, and the future of computing, Josh Crumb and Michelle Dennedy examine how we can reclaim attention, privacy, and individual sovereignty — and why the systems we design today will shape not only our technologies, but our consciousness and collective future.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
Patrick Whitney is one of the most influential figures in contemporary design. As Dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, he helped establish human-centered design as a discipline capable of addressing challenges far beyond products — transforming how governments, healthcare systems, businesses, and civic institutions approach complex problems.
Following a screening of What Are People For? executive producer Ashley Lukasik joins in a conversation on his enduring philosophy of human-centered innovation and the evolving role of design in shaping more equitable, participatory, resilient, and humane futures.structured, personal representations of identity and experience. This talk examines the intersection of technology, psychology, and design to reveal new possibilities for human insight and connection.
In place of a traditional Q&A, join us for a relaxed and intimate conversation with Mike on the Aspen Collective Porch immediately following his talk.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
An intimate evening gathering to welcome our speakers, donors, contributors and friends of the ADC. Hosted at Las Montañas, this dinner offers thoughtful conversation, beautiful surroundings, and a shared table with those helping bring the conference to life.
10 seats available for a minimum contribution of $1,000.00
Location:
Las Montanas, 205 South Mill St -
Let’s boogie!
Location:
Aspen Collective Gallery
Saturday
19
🎤: Main Stage Talks
🌿: In the Wild
🎉: Parties & Events
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Start your morning with a gorgeous hike looking over town with local, Jesse Kahn and co-founder of ADC, Eli Bucksbaum
Meet At:
Koch Park - 120 W Cooper AveLittle Cloud Trail is an easy to moderate hiking loop across the front side of Aspen’s ski mountain. Wear ankle supported, close toed shoes. Bring water, sunscreen, a hat, and sunglasses.
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Start the day with a coffee and good company with The Shea Team on the Aspen Collective Porch for espresso, conversation, and a chance to connect with fellow conference-goers before the day gets underway.
Location:
Aspen Collective Gallery - 213 S Mill St -
What can an object make us think about? Artist-maker-gallerist, Sam Harvey and artist-maker-gallerist, Joseph Santiago Dieppa bring a constellation of objects and artworks into a visual exchange — challenging, provoking, and building on each other’s ideas as they move between material, process, craft, function, beauty, and the strange lives objects take on once they enter the world.
Part conversation, part debate, and part sparring match, Thinking Through Things is a practice about looking and seeing— an invitation to see familiar things differently and question what we think we know. Moderated by Sarah Roy of the Red Brick Art Center.
Location:
The Wheeler Opera House -
Join Aspen-based landscape architect Ann Mullins for a guided walking tour of the Aspen Institute’s historic 40-acre campus, a landmark of American design shaped by Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer.
Designed between 1949 and 1975, the grounds reflect Bayer’s vision of a “total work of art,” where landscape, architecture, and public sculpture seamlessly converge. This immersive experience offers insight into the site of the original International Design Conference in Aspen and highlights the lasting legacy of one of Aspen’s most influential designers.
Location:
Herbert Bayer Center
Reserve your spot -
What happens when we allow ourselves to look beyond what we already know? From the edge of space to the limits of human imagination, Bobby Cabbagestalk and David Levine (Creative Strategist, Artist explore how movement, curiosity, and awe can shift our perspective — and inspire us to see new possibilities on Earth and beyond.
Through stories of exploration, science, and discovery, Bobby Cabbagestalk and David Levine explore why reaching for the unknown isn't just about space, it's about expanding the way we think, create, and imagine the future.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
Across cultures, generations, and creative disciplines, artists and designers are increasingly looking beyond conventional ideas of innovation to rediscover deeper forms of knowledge. This conversation examines how ancestral memory, cultural inheritance, and relationships to land, material, and ritual continue to influence contemporary creative practice, asking what it means to carry wisdom forward while designing the future.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
What might trees tell us if we learned how to listen? Join environmental psychologist Lindsay Branham for an exploration of our relationship with the living world and the intelligence of the landscapes around us.
Meet at Aspen Collective Gallery at 1:45pm.Location:
Aspen Collective Gallery -
What happens when the boundaries of an artist’s practice disappear? Lucy McRae has built a career across art, science, technology, fashion, film, and speculative research; Magnus Resch studies the systems that shape how artists build sustainable careers and economic value. Together, they examine what it means to make a living — and a life — as an artist today. Who determines value? Can commercial success coexist with creative independence? And in a world where almost anything can be produced, what is still worth making?
Location:
Wheeler Opera House -
Every great creative endeavor begins with an idea, but the path from inspiration to something that moves people is rarely linear. Bringing together producer Jeff Kite, entrepreneur Ben Vardi, musician Greg Gonzales, and artist and filmmaker Warren Fu, this conversation explores how radically different creative practices share the same challenges: finding a voice, embracing uncertainty, collaborating with others, and knowing when to trust intuition over certainty. Through stories of breakthrough moments, creative pivots, and lessons learned, the panel reveals what it really takes to build work that endures, and why the best ideas are often the ones that evolve along the way.
Producer Jeff Kite (The Voidz, Cigarettes After Sex) sits down with his colleagues and friends, songwriter Greg Gonzalez (Cigarettes After Sex), Spin Master co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Ben Varadi, and director Warren Fu (Daft Punk, The Weeknd, Dua Lipa) to trace the path from the moment of inspiration to the finished product..Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
A special evening at Aspen’s newest home for live jazz, bringing the ADC community together after dark for live music, art, and an evening of entertainment in the heart of town.
6pm music and 9pm musicLocation:
Paul JAS Center
Tickets Available Soon -
Journey up Castle Creek Road to Toklat, a high-elevation mountain setting far from Aspen’s lights, for an evening beneath the stars. Explore the night sky with Bobby Cabbagestalk and David Levine through telescopes, stories, and music — a chance to slow down, look up, and experience the wonder of what’s beyond us.
Meet At:
Aspen Collective Gallery - 213 S. Mill StA maximum of 51 seats are available on shuttles. Please make sure to RSVP.
Sunday
20
🎤: Main Stage Talks
🌿: In the Wild
🎉: Parties & Events
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Learn to identify and harvest wild foods and medicines through seeds and roots as they hunker down for winter. We will learn to identify “skeletons” of summer plants to find nutrient-dense roots and protein-rich seeds, mastering the skills of the late-season harvest.
Meet at:
American Lake Trailhead
Rides will be coordinated based on RSVPAmerican Lake Trail is an easy to moderate hike. Wear ankle supported, close toed shoes. Bring water, sunscreen, a hat, and sunglasses, and a water bottle.
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The most important architecture we inhabit isn't a building — it's ourselves. Long before we shape the world around us, our nervous systems, beliefs, and lived experiences shape how we move through it. Bringing together Reality Architect Marisa Hallsted and somatic practitioner Jeremy Fisher, this conversation explores the relationship between identity, embodiment, and healing, revealing how transformation begins beneath the surface. Through neuroscience, somatic practice, and embodied awareness, they examine how tending to our inner architecture can unlock greater creativity, resilience, connection, and purpose.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
For centuries, artists and designers have looked to nature for inspiration. Today, a new generation is moving beyond imitation toward collaboration.
Working across sculpture, architecture, environmental research, and material experimentation, Lauren Shapiro, Maura Trumble, Karen Marie Stonely explore what it means to create with living systems rather than simply represent them. From coral reefs and geological time to regenerative architecture and changing landscapes, their work challenges the boundary between the built and the natural worlds.
Together they ask how creativity might become a practice of stewardship—one that embraces adaptation, interdependence, and the intelligence embedded in the environments we inhabit.
Location:
Wheeler Opera House, Main Stage -
Slow down and look again. Join Andy Millner for an informal outdoor drawing session inspired by Aspen’s landscape. No experience necessary — just curiosity and a willingness to look closely.
Location:
Aspen Collective Gallery -
A participatory exploration of intuition, perception, and the signals we often overlook. Working with plants as guides, Jeremy Fischer invites participants to slow down, tune into their senses, and explore another way of knowing.
Location:
TBD -
TBD
Location:
Wheeler Opera House -
In the Wild programs presented by Studio MAXIMA