Biennale
Internationale
Design
Saint-Étienne
Our homes provide us with shelter; with places where our identities are formed and can be expressed; and with environments in which we can maintain our well-being, and from which we can communicate with people at a distance through technology, and directly with our local communities. These benefits of living ‘at home’ are constantly being challenged and continually need to be interrogated and re-defined.
The exhibition At Home: Panorama de nos vies domestiques, curated by Penny Sparke, Cat Rossi and Jana Scholze, teachers and researchers in the Modern Interiors Research Centre in Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London, will address the major changes that have characterized, and will characterize, our ways of living in domestic spaces before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
To accompany the exhibition, this day-long online symposium will host two keynote speakers, including Olivier Peyricot, the Scientific Director of the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne, and Dr. Annmarie Adams, who has joint appointments in the School of Architecture and the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, and four conversations between the curators and a selection of designers whose work is in the exhibition, among them Anab Jain from the design studio Superflux and film-maker and architect, Liam Young.
While the keynote addresses will provide an overview of the aims and the design of the exhibition, as well as the broader context of the links between our homes and our well-being, the conversations will invite the audienceto join indepth discussions about the themes of shelter, identities, well-being and connectness, which underpin the exhibition. Panel discussions will bring the ideas together and there will opportunities throughout the day for the audience to pose questions to the panel members.
Programme & replays
Session one: 10.00 – 13.00 (CET)
First part
10.00 Introduction by the curators: Penny Sparke, Cat Rossi, Jana Scholze
10.20 Keynote: Olivier Peyricot
10.40 Panel discussion/questions
Watch the replay
Second part
11.30 Conversation 1: Jana Scholze with Rianne Makkink of Makkink and Bey
12.00 Conversation 2: Penny Sparke with Anab Jain, Superflux
12.30 Panel discussion/questions
Watch the replay
Session 2: 14.00 – 17.00 (CET)
First part
14.00 Introduction by the designers of At Home: Plaid London
14.20 Keynote: Annmarie Adams
14.40 Panel discussion/questions
Watch the replay
Second part
15.20 Conversation 1: Cat Rossi with Stephen Burks
15.50 Conversation 2: Jana Scholze with Liam Young
16.20 Panel discussion/questions
16.45 Summing up by the curators
17.00 End of Symposium
Watch the replay
Keynote speakers
Olivier Peyricot
Olivier Peyricot is a designer, researcher and exhibition curator.
Between 1996 and 2010 he was the director of the agency IDSland specializing in industrial design, furniture and fittings.
Then, since 2008 he was teacher of object design at the EnsAD – National School of Decorative Arts. Since 2010, he is active in the areas of intervention in the research and experimentation in the fields of automotive, domestic and urban spaces, technology and lifestyle.
In 2014-2022, Olivier was Director of Research of the Cité du design and Scientific Director of the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne at the Cité du Design of Saint-Étienne.
Makkink & Bey
Studio Makkink & Bey is led by architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey. The studio works invarious domains of applied art and includes public space projects, product design, architecture, exhibition design and applied arts. Supported by a design team, they have been operating their design practice since 2002.
The ambition of Studio Makkink & Bey is to see the role of the designer expanded to the most strategic function possible. To this end, their design team includes professionals from many different fields of knowledge; forming alliances with other designers, architects and experts. The design strategy of Studio Makkink & Bey is to re-appropriate what is already present in the context of an assignment, with a strong emphasis on the process. These contextual elements aren't just rearranged within one product, but also on the scale of a building, a landscape or a social work environment.
Anab Jain
Anab Jain is a designer, filmmaker, and co-founder of Superflux, a critically acclaimed foresight, design and technology company in London working for clients like V&A, Google, UNDP and BBC. Anab’s work has won honours from Apple Computers Inc., UNESCO, Geneva Human Rights Festival, and TED. Her work has been featured on NPR Radio, BBC 4, CBC, New York Times, Evening Standard, and the Guardian, and exhibited at MoMA New York, V&A Museum and National Museum of China, La Biennale di Venezia amongst others.
Anab is also Professor and Programme Leader for Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Her work can be found at www.superflux.in
Dr. Annmarie Adams
Educated as an architect and architectural historian at UC Berkeley, Dr Annmarie Adams is jointly appointed in McGill University’s School of Architecture and the Department of Social Studies of Medicine. She is the author of Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900 (McGill-Queens, 1996), Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943 (U Minn Press, 2008) and co-author of Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (UTP, 2000). Recent awards include the Faculty of Engineering’s Christophe Pierre Award for Research Excellence (2016) and the President’s Award for Excellence in Media (2017) from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
Liam Young
Liam Young is an architect, director and BAFTA nominated producer who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. Described by the BBC as ‘the man designing our futures’, his visionary films and speculative world designs for the entertainment industry are both extraordinary images of tomorrow and urgent examinations of the environmental questions facing us today.
Stephen Burks
Stephen Burks is one of the most recognized American industrial designers of his generation.
He has worked as a product development consultant in close collaboration with artisans and craftspeople throughout the globe. He believes in a pluralistic vision of design inclusive of all cultural perspectives. His Brooklyn-based studio, Stephen Burks Man Made, is deeply invested in the transformative power of craft techniques that challenge the limits of new technologies within industrial production. Their projects include furniture, installations, lighting, packaging, and product design for some of the world’s leading design-driven brands. Burks studied architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and Product Design at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design. He is the recipient of several awards, including being the only African American to win the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design. In 2019, he became the first Harvard Loeb Fellow from the discipline of product design and was recently adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP. Opening in September 2022, Stephen Burks Man Made will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta entitled “Stephen Burks: Shelter In Place”.
