An informal conversation with the youngest generation of designers about their objectives and workmethods curated by Ineke Hans. With: Marjan van Aubel, Soft Baroque, Sarah van Gameren, Silo Studio and moderated by Max Fraser.
The classic role designer-client has changed in the last 20 years.
Young designers are nowadays active in different positions: as entrepreneur, engineer, strategist, inventor, community worker, or combinations of that. They share knowledge, cooperate with scientists and academics and sometimes there is not even a physical object anymore. Digitalisation and online exposure moreover seemed to have accelerated all of those developments to even bigger changes for design and the role of the designer.
For the Global Design Forum at the V&A Ineke Hans curated a conversation between Dutch and UK designers that looks into this changing position of the designer and the future changes that might come. Moderator Max Fraser - design editor, publisher and founder of London Design Guide - talks to this youngest generation of designers about their drives and objectives in design.
What: Engineers, Inventors & Non-Materialists: a conversation at the V&A, see and reserve a seat
Where: V&A The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, Level 4
When: 23 September, Global Design Forum 1.30pm - 2.30pm
ON SPEAKERS
- Marjan van Aubel:
Marjan van Aubel (NL) designs materials and objects whose practice spans the fields of science and chemistry. She graduated at the Royal College of Art Design Products in 2012.
She blends scientific precision with sensory responsiveness to develop aesthetic solutions for the future. Van Aubel collaborates with scientists and manufacturers of materials and makes tangible the potential of technology and energy-harvesting for the benefit of the living environment.
At the heart of her collection is a series of innovative materials, from foam porcelain to integrated solar cells based on the properties of colour. Intuitive and inquisitive, she believes interdisciplinary practice is the way forward for design.
In 2015 Marjan founded Caventou focussing on naturally integrated solar technology into every day life. Marjan van Aubel exhibited at world-class institutions and her work is a.o. part of the permanent collections of Vitra Design Museum, and MoMA New York. She won many awards in a very short time a.o. the Swarovski Emerging Talent medal in 2015.
www.marjanvanaubel.com - www.cavantou.com
- Sarah van Gameren (Glithero)
Glithero are British designer Tim Simpson and Dutch designer Sarah van Gameren, who met and studied at the Royal College of Art. From their studio in London they create product, furniture, and time-based installations that give birth to unique and wonderful products. The work is presented in a broad spectrum of media, but follows a consistent conceptual path; to capture and present the beauty in the moment things are made.
Glithero explores and invents products and ways of making and is known for creating mesmerising, time-based mechanical installations.
From machines that miraculously create wax chandeliers from strung wick, a pouring slide that becomes a 10 metre long poly-concrete table, to ceramics that turn vivid blue with UV light, the key ingredients of their work are time and transformation. With their own concoction of creation-performance they aim to bridge creative disciplines and make works that can be understood by all.
Glithero works for international clients and in 2016 they were invited to make one of the installations for LDF in the V&A. Their project The Green Room can be found in stairwell G of the V&A.
www.glithero.com
- Soft Baroque:
Soft Baroque is formed by recent Royal College of Art graduates Saša Štucin (SVN) and Nicholas Gardner (AUS). Their London based practice focuses on creating work with conflicting functions and imagery, without abandoning beauty or consumer logic. They explore how thoroughly digital representations have begun to supersede physical objects, and how much design, as a result, has become about creating a spectacle rather than enabling a specific function.
Soft Baroque is keen to blur the boundaries between acceptable furniture typologies and conceptual representative objects.
So far they’ve been showing work at V&A, Christie’s, Aram Gallery and 19 Greek Street in London, Swiss Institute in New York, A Palazzo Gallery in Brescia, Design Miami/Basel (Basel) and Collective Design (NYC) fairs and at Milan, London, New York, Stockholm and Dubai Design Week. During LDF Soft Baroque presents work in Brompton Design District.
www.softbaroque.com
Silo Studio
Silo Studio is the design collaboration of Attua Aparicio Torinos and Oscar Lessing, who formed the partnership while studying on the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, London, from 2009 to 2011.
Coming from backgrounds in engineering and design, the core of Silo’s work is to look at industrial processes and materials, bringing them into the studio to develop. But by adopting a hands-on approach, which they refer to as ‘Handmade hi-tech’, they aim to discover possibilities that the production line does not see, developing the expressive potential in industrial materials. A mix of craft and technology.
The experiments to lead to inventing new skins and processes and interesting alternative for products and production.
Silo Studio's Batijos glass was picked up by Hay. During LDF2016 Silo Studio presents work in Brompton Design District.
www.silostudio.net
Full info on all UK-NL London Design Festival events via this link.
The salons on Furniture & the changing position of the designer are a cooperation of STUDIO | INEKEHANS with London Design Festival.
Furniture & the changing position of the designer is supported by The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in London and the Internationalization Programme of Creative Industries Fund of the Netherlands
Full info on all UK-NL London Design Festival events via this link.
REPORTS:
> Find a report on Hybrids can be found here and see film impression here
> Find a report on Engineers, Inventors & Non-materialists can be found here and see film impression here
> Find a report on Furniture's future here