The Sound of Casual Chatter

My first Pecha Kucha Night here in Berlin last week was highly entertaining -- a blend of vaudeville-sketch revue, design-school degree show and slam-poetry tournament. A Japanese industrial designer showed snapshots of her recent trip to Japan; a guy with a pink Mohican made fun of "digital bohemians" (to riotous laughter from the digital bohemians in the audience); a Swede from a magazine called Nord confirmed-slash-overturned a few preconceptions about Scandinavians; and a graphic designer drew squirms, cringes and giggles from the crowd with technical drawings of bone-elongation processes he claimed were made for his first customer, his osteopath uncle. The six-minute slots felt just right, and the event came off feeling more like good entertainment than tedious self-promotion.

Pecha Kucha evenings are the brainchild of Tokyo-based architects Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, who make adventurous buildings together as Klein Dytham. Their club SuperDeluxe, a beautifully designed basement close to the Roppongi Hills development and frequented mostly by ex-pats, has hosted the Tokyo events since they started in 2003.