Climate Change Festival

Held between 31st May — 8th June, 2008, this festival celebrated existing sustainable projects in Birmingham and promoted new strategies for tackling climate change. It was organised by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Build Environment) and Birmingham City Council. I was asked to put on a Claystation event, encouraging visitors to propose a new and sustainable vision for a part of town undergoing regeneration. Before modelling their idea on a giant map, each participant had to complete a ‘Building Consent Form’ where they outlined the purpose of their design. These provided a useful form of feedback from this co-creation exhibition. 

Thanks to all the team who helped make the event a success:
Tom Ballhatchet, Graham Powell, Maggs Rees, Charlie Huang, Ghazale Foroutan Jazi, Renu Patankar, Peter Nielsen, Josef Pointner, Elyn Yu, Nikhil Korde, Kay Chou, Andree Lee, Helen Chan

The Secret Lives of Objects

This is a book by my colleague and mentor, Jane Graves, published May 2008.
Jane taught cultural studies, psychoanalytical theory and sociology at Central Saint Martins for over 30 years and influenced generations of artists and designers. Later on Jane worked as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist, but still had a strong connection with Central Saint Martins.

The book is a collection of 19 essays by Jane and capture her razor wit and analysis in the areas of design and aesthetics. They are as relevant, insightful and funny as when they were written.
The cover image is a sculpture by Bruce Gernand
The book design is by Sean O’Mara
There is a generous endorsement by Adam Phillips
ISBN 978–1‑4251–7070‑7

Jane was adamant that she would not work with an external editor for the book as she had a particular vision for it. I helped edit the texts and put them together for publication. I suggested to Jane that we illustrate the book with a series of collages from students and ex-students. She was very enthusiastic about this. I include some of these below. My own contribution was an essay about the use of collage in design — something that I have incorporated in student work for many years. I reproduce this below. 

I am sad to report that Jane died on 29th March 2011 at the age of 76.

Continue reading The Secret Lives of Objects

Making is Designing

This essay was produced for the catalogue for the Six Cities Design Festival. It concerns the importance of making in the act of design — a strong philosophy behind the development of the Claystation series of events. “Claystation – Remodelling Scotland, Published and Distributed by The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Architecture. ISBN 1–905061-11–0

Continue reading Making is Designing

2007 Milan Review

If you like my Clay chairs, you must be a Good Guy” Maarten Baas.

This was the first full scale review I did of the Milan Furniture Fair. I continued to write regular reviews for Chinese publications for around 10 years. It was always a rush to get to interviews during these years as I was also putting on exhibitions with my students, but all this adds to the excitement of the fair! The best bit was meeting designers whom I admired. It was great to get Maarten Baas on the front cover of the magazine (even using my amateur portrait!) as the covers of MW are typically reserved for Hollywood celebs.

Continue reading 2007 Milan Review