Category: Q&A

‘Spatial practitioners’, Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe founded Cooking Sections in 2013. Here they discuss Climavore, their recent project on the Isle of Skye & why what we eat should focus our minds on food supply chains & ecosystems.

Leonie Bell is V&A Dundee’s new director. Here she discusses her role, the vital importance of design in the age of a pandemic & her delight in the clothes of Mary Quant & Jean Muir. Winter 2020

Christina Gaiger was recently appointed the youngest president, to date of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. Here she talks to fellow architect Andy Summers about her career path, cycling routes & activism in architecture. Winter 2020

Jack Brindley opened Pavilion Pavilion last year in Glasgow. Both a studio for his own practice & a gallery, where the territory between contemporary art & objects of use is explored. Summer 2020

The author of Design in Postnormal Times & recent speaker in DES’s Design for our Times, Alice Twemlow confronts trash, future fossils, digital detritus. Here she explores both deep time & the deep future & celebrates the work of the Scottish Enlightenment geologist, James Hutton. Spring 2020

Designers Formafantasma explore materials, their origins, use and impact. In their 2020 exhibition Cambio at the Serpentine Galleries in London, they examined the life and after-life of trees. Here they discuss design & ecology. Summer 2020

Architect Jude Barber discusses thinking afresh & motivation, recalling a 2014 project with author Louise Welsh entitled Empire Cafe. A founding member of Collective Architecture, Jude recently ran as a candidate to become president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Summer 2020

Alice Jacobs set up Flux, a laser & CNC workshop in Glasgow in 2012. Here she talks expanding her business, her new premises Land Rovers & music. Spring 2020

“I’ve always been a closet Ivor Novello fan, ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ has both a seasonal and epochal relevance right now!’ DES speaks to Christopher Breward, newly-appointed director of the National Museums Scotland.
Spring 2020

‘When I say I am an upholsterer, I often get a blank expression. You can see people turning the word over in their head, slightly puzzled. It’s funny, every day most of us sit on upholstered furniture’. Proud upholsterer, Peter Holmes discusses firm favourites, collaboration & Pilates. Spring 2020