We've got the perfect excuse for you to spend a couple days in the dazzling new Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons the New School for Design: AfterTaste 2, a two-day symposium on Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5 that will take a critical look at contemporary issues in the field of interior design. In the course of three panels that promise to tackle everything from "the intellectual history of taste" to "the narrative life of things," more than a dozen illustrious designers, scholars, and artists will explore how interior design has come to be a curious blend of environmental psychology, fashion design, product design, architecture, material science, and cultivated taste (hmm, sounds like a certain blog we know). Among the speakers are artist James Casebere, known for his photographs of modeled built environments; the amazing Quay Brothers; Columbia dean Mark Wigley; and I.D. editor in chief Julie Lasky.

The fun begins on April 4 in Parsons' new Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium. "The auditorium's perforated bamboo side walls slow down the speed of sound as it travels back," architect Lyn Rice told us when we toured the new Parsons building last month. Come for the design discussion, stay for the defying of physical laws!