Identity and place and Loughborough

Speaker and co-curator of the seminar 'Identity, Civic Pride and Civic Place'.

This seminar will discuss the possibilities design offers in developing an identity, structure and meaning for a place. We have invited individuals whose practice is engaged with ideas around how design can creatively connect with communities to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces, developing a sense of pride and purpose.

The speakers at this event will be:

Robert Harland
Robert is Lecturer in Visual Communication (Graphic Design) at Loughborough University. His interests reside at an interface between Design Studies, Visual Culture and Urban Geography. He examines how urban graphic objects as a plurality of signs, symbols, sculpture, screens, etc. contribute to the identity, structure and meaning of the city in developed and developing global contexts. This is explored from the perspective of graphic design as urban design, and underpinning his research are questions about the identification and relationship between graphic form and urban context. He seeks to challenge ideas about what graphic design is, why it is relevant, what it can be, and how it is understood as a visual form of knowledge production.

Robert Sollis from Europa
Europa is a graphic design partnership formed in 2007 and based in London. It is run by Mia Frostner, who is Swedish, and Robert Sollis, who is English. The pair met in 2005 whilst studying at the Royal College of Art in London. For the past six years Europa have been designing books, publications, signage and graphic identities for clients who are operating predominately in the public or cultural sector. These clients have included institutions such as Tate Modern, Royal College of Art, Architecture Foundation, Greater London Authority, Somerset House and Victoria & Albert Museum, artists such as Ryan Gander, Martin Beck and Alice Channer and architects such as DK-CM and We Made That.

Patrick Lacey from Åbäke
Åbäke is a collective of four graphic designers. Patrick Lacey is from the UK, Kajsa Stahl from Sweden, Benjamin Reichen and Maki Suzuki from France who decided to work together in the summer of 2000.Their physical work includes posters, CD and record designs, furniture, and installations in art galleries and public spaces. Much of their work concentrates on the social aspect of design and the strength that collaboration can bring to a project. Events often involve (in no particular order) film, dancing, eating and cooking and teaching. They are also singers, painters, photographers, members of bands, furniture designers, curators, fashion designers, DJs and teachers.

Finn Williams from Common Office
Finn Williams is an architect-turned-planner based in London. He studied architecture at the Mackintosh in Glasgow, FAUP in Porto, and the Royal College of Art where he was given the New London Architecture prize. Finn worked for Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and General Public Agency before setting up Common Office, an independent practice working with planning, politics, and the public. Finn started Common Office in 2008. It deals in the complex reality of the built environment, and works where architecture and planning can make a practical difference.

This event is part of Market Town, a series of new commissions and critical debate that sets out to re-imagine the future of Loughborough’s high streets led by Radar, LU Arts and Charnwood Arts, in partnership with Love Loughborough and Charnwood borough Council. The programme is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

This output is part of a wider research project Identity, urbanism and the public realm.

Other outputs which come under this project are the following:

The Identity Facade: item #9902
Graphic Archaeology: item #9901
’ough’ough: item #9890

• http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9902...
• http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9901...
• http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9890...