Talks Series Spring 2010: Professional Practice
This series will feature talks by individual designers and practitioners, and ‘Design Conversation’ group discussions chaired by Visiting Professor Sebastian Bergne, about different experiences, concerns, aspects and issues of professional life as a designer. All talks will take place on Monday afternoons, 14.30-16.00, in the Design Products 8th floor seminar room
Monday 11 January
Tim Parsons
RCA Design Products graduate (2000) Tim Parsons is a product designer and a writer and lecturer on matters of 'design'. He explores a broad range of approaches, believing a project's direction should be shaped by a search for the definitive in relation to specific conditions, rather than by applying a pre-conceived style. Mixing influences from craft and industrial design, his projects examine notions of familiarity, functionality and the quality of materials and processes, producing simple, durable objects. Tim taught at Manchester Metropolitan University before returning to London in 2007 to teach at Camberwell College of Arts. His book Thinking:Objects – Contemporary approaches to product design was published in 2009.
www.timparsons.info
Monday 18 January
Design Conversations
Designing for ego or conscience?
What does or should motivate designers today? Is it personal recognition, doing good for society or simply creating a beautiful object that is the ideal behind our creative process? Are we, perhaps, so used to presenting our own personal agenda that the notion of a group manifesto or collective cause is no longer an option?
Sebastian Bergne will be in conversation with Emily Campbell from the Royal Society of Arts and author of its Design & Society blog and Michael Marriott, designer and RCA Design Products Platform 6 tutor
www.sebastianbergne.com
www.michaelmarriott.com
http://designandsociety.rsablogs.org.uk/
Monday 25 January
Nipa Doshi
Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien are partners kin the London-based design office Doshi Levien. Nipa and Jonathan bring together two distinct and complementary approaches to their work. While Nipa’s work is strongly influenced by Indian visual and material culture, Jonathan’s approach is rooted in design for industrial production. Together, their work celebrates the cultural hybrid and explores the synthesis between technology, story telling, industrial design and craftsmanship. Doshi Levien was established in 2000 and their work includes installation design for the Wellcome Trust, interaction design for Intel, insight and design direction for Nokia, product design for Tefal, furniture design for Moroso and bespoke shoes for London based “aristo” bootmakers, John Lobb.
www.doshilevien.com
Monday 1 February
Alexander Grünsteidl
After many years of corporate product development, Alexander Grünsteidl seeks to create Digital Lifestyle Showrooms, which will become the home, beyond traditional retail, for future products and services, and will affect the way we shape the High Street of the near future. The dynamics of public spaces are rapidly evolving. Emerging, internet-based retail models change the ways we shop for products and services. Wireless mobile technologies affect how we form and maintain relationships in an increasingly diverse social landscape. Before we continue innovating products and services in these changing business conditions, we need to create the environment that facilitates transactions between the producers and consumers. Alexander is also currently RCA Design Products Platform 2 Visiting Lecturer.
http://digitalwellbeinglabs.com/dwb/?page_id=65
Monday 8 February
Hannes Koch
London-based art and design collective rAndom International was founded in 2002 by Stuart Wood, Flo Ortkrass and Hannes Koch with a vision to create engaging and experimental art and design projects. Working from the fringes of innovation in science, art and design, rAndom International have developed a series of increasingly artistic projects and installations that aim to re-interpret the ‘cold’ nature of digital-based work by providing the viewer with the opportunity to have a more hands-on experience with technology. Awarded with an honourable mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2009 for their Audience Installation, April 2009 saw rAndom International launching “Mirrors”, their first permanent installation in London. In 2008 rAndom’s work was included in the “Design And The Elastic Mind” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and accessioned into the permanent collection of the MoMA. In November 2007, The Observer recognised rAndom as one of the top ten of creative talents in UK Art and Design. Their projects have won prestigious design awards such as the iF Design Award 2005 and 2006, the Wallpaper* Design Award 2006, and the Creative Futures Award 2005. Collectively, the members of rAndom are currently RCA Design Products Platform 8 Visiting Lecturers.
www.random-international.com
Monday 15 February
Design Conversations
Is function fantasy?
Historically, a modernist or practical approach to design that puts functionally at it’s heart, has been the cornerstone of design. So much so, in fact, that it created a recognizable “pure” visual language appreciated by some and accepted by most.
In today’s world the relationship between manufacturer, product, designer and consumer is more complex. The average consumer is visually educated, has a choice of product, and is often more concerned with the image given out by the product than it’s actual function. Manufacturers can easily achieve acceptable functionality so concentrate on attracting the visually aware and fickle consumer by the aesthetic of their objects that is no longer necessarily related to its mechanical function.
Does this mean that an object created today with a functional, “pure” aesthetic, does so superficially merely to gain perceived credibility from it’s roots or because there is an absolute quality in this approach to design that is removed from its historical or industrial context?
Sebastian Bergne will be in conversation with the furniture designer Terence Woodgate and Christopher Wilk, Keeper of Furniture, Textiles and Fashion at the V&A and curator of the exhibition Modernism, Designing a New World, 1914-1939 (2006)
www.studiowoodgate.com
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1331_modernism/
Monday 22 February
Studio Glithero
Studio Glithero is a London-based Anglo-Dutch design alliance, founded by Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gamaren who met while students in the RCA Design Products Department. The studio creates time-based installations and processes which give birth to unique and wonderful products. With their own concoction of design performance, they aim to bridge creative disciplines and reach a universal audience. Tim and Sarah are currently RCA Design Products Platform 8 Visiting Lecturers.
www.studioglithero.com
Monday 1 March
Kenneth Grange
Kenneth Grange is a Visiting Professor for RCA Design Products. His career began as an architectural drafting assistant in the 1950s which led to commissions for exhibition stands, and by the early 1970s he was a founding-partner in Pentagram, the world-renowned interdisciplinary design consultancy. Grange's career has spanned more than half a century, and his many designs include the first UK parking meters, food mixers for Kenwood, razors for Wilkinson Sword, cameras for Kodak, typewriters for Imperial, clothes irons for Morphy Richards, cigarette lighters for Ronson, washing machines for Bendix, lamps for Anglepoise, pens for Parker, and British Rail's famous High Speed Train. Grange was also involved in the design of the innovative 1997 TX1 version of the famous London taxi-cab. Grange's designs have won ten Design Council Awards, the Duke of Edinburgh’s prize for Elegant Design in 1966, and in 2001 he was awarded the Prince Philip Designers Prize – an award honouring a lifetime achievement. He has won the Gold Medal of the Chartered Society of Designers, and is a member of the Royal Society of Arts’ élite Faculty of ‘Royal Designers for Industry’. Grange has been awarded honorary Doctorate degrees by the Royal College of Art, De Montfort University and the Open University.
One quality of much of Grange’s design work is that it is not based on just the styling of a product. His design concepts arise from a fundamental reassessment of the purpose, function and use of the product. He has also said that his attitude to designing any product is that he wants it to be "a pleasure to use".
Monday 8 March
Tord Boontje
The Professor of Design Products, Tord Boontje studied industrial design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (1986–91), and at the Royal College of Art (1992-4). In 1996 he founded Studio Tord Boontje, seeking a delicate marriage of design with emotion that is as broadly accessible as it is enticing. The Studio’s work springs from a belief that modernism does not mean minimalism, that the contemporary does not forsake tradition, and that technology does not abandon people and the senses. The studio works on a diverse range of projects with clients including Moroso, Swarovski, Hewlett Packard, Target, Artecnica, Habitat and Kvadrat. Alongside his industrial work, Tord places major importance on self-initiated projects that allow him to experiment with new design directions, materials and techniques. A strong interest in the social and ecological responsibilities of a designer has lead Tord to develop both craft-based work (with artisans in South America and Africa) as well as products employing the latest industrial technologies.
www.tordboontje.com
Monday 15 March
Design Conversations
How important is the story around an object?
Sebastian Bergne will be in conversation with Gareth Williams, RCA Design Products Senior Tutor and (to be confirmed)