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Beyond phones and drones: critical design and digital technology
3 November 2014A small, but dedicated, constellation of designers and artists, who have long been surfing the outer reaches of speculative design and digital technology, are increasingly being courted by the mainstream. We investigate the distinctions and overlaps between critical, tech-infused design and art, the problems in securing funding for such projects, and ask what impact they might have on the wider world.
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Art attack: inside the Folkestone Triennial
28 October 2014Now in its third iteration, the Folkestone Triennial is going some way to reversing the negative perceptions of it as a town in decline. This year, the eight-week festival, curated for the first time by Lewis Biggs, brings together a mix of interventions that respond to Folkestone’s past as a resort and major port.
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Maps to Memorials: Exploring the Work of MacDonald Gill
28 October 2014Herbert Wright finds joy in the work of graphic designer and architect MacDonald Gill, on show at Suffolk’s Lettering Arts Centre.
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Introducing architecture practice RCKa
28 October 2014RCKa is only six years old, yet the practice has already clocked up, among other things, a Civic Trust Award-winning youth and community centre (TNG in Lewisham, 2013), a big city art gallery (Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery, 2011), and a prestigious laboratory project — most architects have to wait 20 years to land one of those — for the world’s largest currency printer De La Rue in the Hampshire countryside.
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Non-competitive advantage: Norway's blossoming design industry
24 October 2014Spurred on by the country’s wealth from North Atlantic oil and gas, Norway’s design industry is blossoming. We talk to its young stars about how to project a small nation, with an almost non-existant design heritage, onto the world design stage, and discuss the benefits of collaboration over competition.
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Gemma Barton: don't look down on interior architecture courses
20 October 2014An education in interior architecture is still looked down on when compared to architecture, says Gemma Barton, designer and senior lecturer at the University of Brighton. But it shouldn’t be so, she argues, when it prepares students admirably for all aspects of the design world.
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Erik Spiekermann - It's time to break free of PowerPoint
14 October 2014At best many PowerPoint presentations are of limited value; at worst they can cause loss of life. Why rely on templates? If there is something to be said, say it, says Erik Spiekermann. Erik Spiekermann set up MetaDesign and FontShop, and is a teacher, author, designer and partner at Edenspiekermann.
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Britain's disused prisons are being turned into hotels and student accommodation
14 October 2014Since 2010 more than a dozen prisons in the UK have closed their doors. Declared ‘surplus to requirements’ by the Ministry of Justice, they are now being sold off to developers. The unlikely future for these buildings, which range from Victorian gaols and medieval fortresses to Sixties’ institutional blocks, could be in the form of hotels or even student accommodation.
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Ron Arad: save design education from bureaucracy and economics
7 October 2014In the first of our Listens for this education-focused issue, industrial designer and former Royal College of Art professor Ron Arad recalls his own student days, his aims at the RCA, and how he is concerned that bureaucracy and economics is now in danger of driving the curriculum.
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The Art of repetition: self expression in Communist-era Hungary
6 October 2014They may have been subjected to the rigidity of the country’s Communist regime, but Hungarians living in post-war state housing nevertheless made the monotonous block dwellings individual and full of character through painting and decoration. Artist Katharina Roters has documented the phenomenon in a new book, out now.
