RCA Design Products
Lecture
Monday 3 October, 2.30-4.00
8th floor seminar room
Barry Curtis and Dr Claire Pajaczkowska
Design Reverie
In support of the first project ‘It started with a dream…’ Clare and Barry will talk about Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Wilfred Bion's concept of Reverie as the 'alpha function' that acts to 'contain' the beta elements of mind, and Donald Winnicott's theory of 'Playing and Reality'. They will also show extracts from the film ‘The Science of Sleep’.
Claire Pajaczkowska is Senior Research Tutor in the School of Material and the author of essays and books including The Sublime Now (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009) and Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture, ed. with Ivan Ward ( Routledge, 2008).
Barry Curtis is a Tutor in the Critical & Historical Studies programme. He is also Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture at Middlesex University, where he was formerly a Head of School and Director of Research. He is a Fellow of the London Consortium, where he teaches a course with Patrick Wright, 'Down: Melancholy, Depression and Regeneration', and chairs a research seminar. Barry is working on a collaborative book on Play to be published by Tate and a book for Reaktion on Imaginary Architecture.
RCA Design Products
Lecture series, Autumn 2011
All lectures Monday 2.30-4.00, 8th floor large seminar room
The theme this term is Industrial Art
“Industrial art begins when the aesthetic judgment of a designer is employed to determine the character of a manufactured article.” (John Gloag, Industrial Art Explained)
In the mid-twentieth century period of high modernism the term ‘industrial art’ would have been understood as the way in which designers shaped products for mass-production by industrial processes for mass markets. Since then it has fallen out of favour, replaced by such terms as ‘industrial design’ and ‘product design’. By pairing ‘industrial’ with ‘art’, writers such as John Gloag in the 1930s were intimating that a designer’s role was to impose a creative singularity and character upon an otherwise purely rational and engineered object, the industrial artifact, in order for it to compete and succeed in the market. Now, the sophistication of design and production techniques, and the sheer proliferation of the world of goods, mean that each and every product that appears is, to a lesser or greater degree, moderated by the eye of a designer. Moreover, we know that the surfeit of industrially made products is a serious challenge to sustainability. Yet the term ‘industrial art’ was also mindful of the antithesis to modern mass-production, craft, which seemed to offer added value and uniqueness to products by the application of hand-skills, intensive techniques and specialized materials. While modern craft such as studio pottery or cabinetmaking still thrives in a certain gallery-oriented sector today, we also see the creation of one-off, highly crafted and engineered artifacts, for example the International Space Station. Are we, therefore, in a new age of ‘industrial art’, where designers can use their skills to shape the unique and future-oriented products and artifacts of the post- industrial age?
10 October, 10am (NOTE TIME)
Design Museum visit
Kenneth Grange, Making Modern Britain
Our Visiting Professor, Kenneth Grange, has very kindly offered to show us around this retrospective exhibition of his work. Kenneth Grange is an internationally known product designer who has spent over 50 years in private practice. Perhaps best known for being a founding partner of Pentagram, Kenneth’s principal clients have included Kodak, Wilkinson Sword, Kenwood, Parker Pens, Anglepoise and British Rail. His designs are part of the fabric of modern Britain, including the Intercity 125 train and the classic London taxi.
Designers in Residence
Three of the Designers in Residence are Design Products graduates: Hye-Yeon Park, Will Shannon and Simon Hasan. The exhibition was designed by Design Products Graduates Joachem Faudet and Jon Harrison. Designers in Residence is an annual residency programme which celebrates new and emerging design talent. The Designers in Residence have been given a bursary to support the development of their career and guidance in creating a new piece of work for the exhibition. They were asked to respond to a brief to consider the idea of imperfection either in an object, environment or experience.
Will Shannon will show us around the exhibition.
17 October
Tord Boontje
Professor Tord Boontje will expand upon his idea of Industrial Art as a model for contemporary design practice.
24 October
Raw Edges
The official collaboration between Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay started after many years of sharing life, thoughts, ideas and everything in-between. Yael’s main focus includes turning two-dimensional sheet materials into curvaceous functional forms, whereas Shay is fascinated by how things move, function and react.
Since their graduation show at the Royal College of Art in 2006, they have received several highly respected awards including The British Council Talented Award, iF Gold Award, Dutch Design Award, Wallpaper* Design Award 2009 and the Elle Decoration International Design Award for best furniture of 2008/9 and the Designer of the Future Award for 2009 from Design Miami/Basel.
Their works have been exhibited at Johnson Trading Gallery in New York, FAT Galerie in Paris, Scope Art Fair in Basel and Rossana Orlandi Milan. Their designs can be found within the permanent collection of the MoMA New-York and The Design Museum London, and in production with Cappellini, Established & Sons and Arco. In addition, Yael & Shay produce unique and limited-edition designs within their own studio in London. Their work has been featured in many major design publications and newspapers worldwide.
www.raw-edges.com
31 October
(Across RCA: no lecture)
7 November
Martin Postler, Postler Fergusson
Postler Ferguson was founded in 2007 by Ian Ferguson and Martin Postler after their graduation from the RCA Design products course. The run a multidisciplinary design consultancy that explores issues of technology, culture and economics through design strategies based on thorough research. They work with an extensive network of designers, filmmakers, artists and manufacturers to meet clients’ needs. Postler Fergusson are the new tutors of Platform 17
www.postlerferguson.com
14 November
Ed Carpenter
RCA graduate Ed Carpenter designs furniture and products under his own name and in partnership with Andre Klauser (Platform 14 tutor). They are also partners in Very Good and Proper, a company they founded with restaurateur Patrick Clayton-Malone to produce furniture they designed for his Canteen restaurant chain. Ed will talk about his work in general and particularly about the development of the Utility chair.
www.klauserandcarpenter.com
* KEYNOTE *
21 November
Glenn Adamson
Glenn Adamson is an author, curator and contributor to the forthcoming BBC series ‘Handmade in Britain’. Adamson is the Head of Graduate Studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum and co-curator, with Jane Pavitt, of the Postmodernism exhibition currently showing at the Museum. He is an authority on the history and theory of the crafts and author of Thinking Through Craft (2007). Now he is finishing a book on the relationship between craft and industry in the 19th century and is well-placed to reflect upon the role of Industrial Art in contemporary design practice.
28 November, 10am (NOTE TIME)
Victoria and Albert Museum visit
Power of Making
Daniel Charny, curator of the exhibition and Design Products Platform 10 tutor, will lead a tour of the exhibition.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/power-of-making/
5 December
Committee
Harry Richardson and Clare Page, (partners in life and work), are artists who have chosen to be designers. Trained as painters at Liverpool Art School, from where they graduated in 1998, Page and Richardson found their principal interest to be the world of consumer goods and objects, which led them out of what they perceived as an art world ghetto towards the more quotidian world that design represents. “We’ve always felt like outsiders in the design industry, but there’s a definite reason that we didn’t go into art: that world is isolated, separate and has its own cathedrals,” they said. “In design, there’s more of a crossover and a dialogue with the ordinary world of commodities.”
http://www.gallop.co.uk/index.php
12 December
Max Lamb
The Design Museum says ‘Max Lamb’s chair designs suggest an aggressiveness that is characteristic of the atavistic spirit in design today. In stark contrast to recent ethereal and romanticised design, or designs that transfer directly from computer to machine manufacture without human intervention, Lamb laboriously chisels, buries, grows and smelts materials into rugged and bold forms… Combining industrial production with handcraftsmanship while fusing high and low technologies, the effect is both raw and intense.’
www.maxlamb.org