British Design Days Programme

Speaker: Maria Kumova, KAK Publishing house

Presentation of the publication «UK Design: context, sсhools, studios, spaces»

«UK Design: context, schools, studios, spaces» This publication is specifically dedicated to British graphic design and its leading role in world visual culture. It covers the history of British design, the main design schools and universities in the UK, as well as the important studios and individual designers, the overall design environment and institutions working in the design sector. It looks not only at the graphic design sector in London, but also explores what the regions and countries of the UK bring to the design table. Discussion of recent cultural trends in graphic design, issues relating to advanced technology and the active UK market, client education, the continuity of generations, and the future of visual communication make this publication more than just a work of reference. The book is published in the framework of UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014 by British Council in partnership with KAK publishing house.

Stuart Falconer graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 2006 with distinction in Advanced Architectural Design. After having previously worked with Groves-Raines Architects in 2003, he went on to gain experience with NORD LLP where he was involved in both large and small scale projects, including the initial competition submission for the highly acclaimed Wexford County Council Headquarters. He also studied at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2004. Stuart received several awards, commendations and nominations for his work. These include winning the SUST award for sustainable design, a commendation for the RIAS Silver Medal for best 5th Year student 2006 as part of the SIX Student Awards and The Patrick Geddes Trust Award for Best Dissertation by an Undergraduate Student. Other nominations and awards include Archiprix International and the Scottish Design Awards, (a commendation in the Emerging Architect of the Year category) and other commendations from the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2006 he co-founded GRAS and qualified as an Architect in 2010.

GRAS is a Scottish design studio, formed in 2006 as part of the established conservation practice Groves-Raines Architects Ltd. GRAS designers aim to produce progressive, sustainable and ambitious design solutions through thorough research and the rigorous analysis of any given brief. Their work is driven by an intuitive, yet highly responsive approach rather than a predetermined style and they strive to achieve levels of excellence in all of their work, irrespective of project budget, client or brief. The studio looks to push the boundaries of what is typically understood as architecture, often entering the fields of product design, graphics, audio visuals and art. The practice recently celebrated their fifth anniversary with an exhibition of 50 individual projects ranging from the micro to the macro scales. These include proposals for smartphone applications, furniture, exhibitions, interior spaces, buildings, streets, cities and countries.

Fi is a manufacturing geek, factory finder, and the founder of Make Works; an independent design organisation that facilitates and celebrates local manufacturing and making. In 2013, she embarked on the Make Works Tour, a 90 day road trip across Scotland finding and filming120 factories and workshops. In 2014, this information was used to launch a digital directory of industry for use by artists and designers, enabling the fabrication of work more easily. Fi is inspired by the value of making, local production and craftsmanship, fascinated by materials, machines and what people can do with access to them. She trained as a product designer at Glasgow School of Art and has previously worked as a designer in Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Scotland for companies such as DMFD, Design Philadelphia Festival, Ben Dawson Furniture and MAKLab.

Stephanie studied fine art at Portsmouth College of Art and following a scholarship to Japan, architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, the Royal College of Art and London Metropolitan University with Caruso St John. In 2001 she and partner Tom Emerson established 6 a Architects. She has developed the practices collaborative approach working with consultants, artists, designers and scientists. She is on the advisory board of Glasgow International Arts Festival and has lectured in the UK and abroad.

6 a Architects was founded by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald in 2001 and has since developed a particular reputation for award-winning contemporary art galleries, educational buildings and residential projects in highly sensitive historic settings. The practice has won national and international competitions and several international awards and nominations for design excellence, including three RIBA awards and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture — the Mies Van der Rohe Award, in 2011 and 2013. In 2012, the practice was presented the Schelling Medal for Architecture at a ceremony in Karlsruhe. Amongst the practice’s recent works are the critically well received buildings for the new contemporary art centre, Raven Row, the South London Gallery, the restoration of the Fashion Galleries at the V&A Museum and Paul Smith cast iron façade Albermarle st. Currently on site is a new, all timber, 60 bed student halls of residence for Churchill College, University of Cambridge, a photography studio for the artist Juergen Teller and a new prototype space for internet cinema site Mubi.

Andrew Haythornthwaite and Shai Akram began their collaboration shortly after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2006 on the Design Products course headed by Ron Arad. Their projects have taken them to China, New Zealand and now, back to the UK.Completed projects together range from interiors to commercial products, whilst they continue their independent explorations and experiments in their East London studio. Their work springs from a curiosity of making processes combined with an appreciation of narrative, and the role it can play to define creative direction. Andrew’s playful illustrations and stories fill his sketch books while his work reveals an attentiveness to detail. Shai’s projects often begin as short essays resulting in works that explore the relationship between objects and culture. Andrew and Shai also run workshops with students exploring ideas of context and storytelling in design. Their work has been exhibited internationally and they have won several awards including Silver from the IDSA (America), Red Dot (Germany), Stringer Award (BeST, New Zealand) and Most Successful Design (China). Andrew has work in the permanent collections of MoMA New York and the Design Museum London while Shai leads the Degree programme for Experimental Design through Objects Spaces and Experiences at Bath Spa University. Together they have completed several celebrated interiors in their home town of London, including the Chin Chin Laboratories Nitro Ice-Cream (Camden), The Book Club (Shoreditch) and most recently Stories on Broadway (London Fields).

At his lecture Pete will touch upon on how designers engage with, and respond, to landscape, place and local culture on the example of Austurland: Designs from Nowhere, the project took four designers, Max Lamb, Julia Lohmann, Gero Grundmann and Thorunn Arnadottir (all graduates from the Royal College of Art, London) to the far East of Iceland to engage with local practitioners and businesses, using naturally occurring resources and materials. The resulting designs were exhibited in Reykjavik and in London, during London Design Festival. A short documentary film about the project, The More You Know, by Sebastian Zeigler and Karna Sigurðardóttir, will be shown as part of the presentation.

Ben and Sam are experience designers and founders of design practice PAN Studio, producing interactive objects for installations and immersive theatre, and creating experimental objects designed to find new ways of enriching everyday living. In 2013 PAN produced Hello Lamppost for Watershed as the inaugural commission for the Playable City award. Hello Lamppost encouraged Bristolians to see the city in a different light, as they traded SMS conversations with local street furniture. The project was exhibited at the Design Museum’s Design of the Year 2014 show. Amongst other projects PAN is working on Run An Empire — a pervasive strategy running game where players run competitively to capture their local area, and A Fork In The Road — a system for creating located choose-your-own-adventure stories on top of city spaces. They have spoken internationally about the value of experience in design and how it relates to memory and can improve our future cities, including at UnBox festival in New Delhi, Replayce: The City in Zurich and TEDx Hamburg.Ben and Sam are visiting tutors at Goldsmiths College, University of London and have worked with the Design Museum, London, to create briefs for their national higher education program.

Pan will run a story writing workshop that will end with a working SMS game to be left behind in the city. As a workshop group participants will write a piece of collaborative fiction based on the city around us, pulling together fact, fiction and the imaginations of the attendees. A Fork in the Road is somewhere between a game and a storytelling platform, it works using the path and road network of the city as a framework to tell branching stories. The system uses text messages to relay content and every junction has multiple directions, allowing players to decide how to progress. The workshop will start with concept generation and research, then we each select a strand of the narrative to write, before adding to the final system and launching our game on to the conference.