David Bramston’s Illuminating Exhibition Opens in China

Our very own David Bramston has produced an illuminating exhibition in China; the exhibition is the first of its kind and showcases a collection of 100 lights created from waste materials.

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David, and his team of nine design students from Guangzhou Institute of Technology, created each of the 100 lights at the headquarters of Guangzhou Valuda Group Ltd in China in just three weeks. The lights have been constructed entirely from waste materials from various factories across China.

The sustainable design project has been running with support from the British Council, as part of its ‘upcycling’ campaign to encourage young designers to turn discarded materials into attractive and useful new products.

David Bramston, who leads the MA International Design Enterprise programme at the University of Lincoln, said: “This has been an incredibly exciting project to work on. We have been involved with a number of upcycling schemes led by the British Council in the past; however the experience of creating 100 new products entirely from waste materials in just 21 days has been unlike any of our other design initiatives.

“New design professionals need to recognise that their decisions to engage with more considered and environmentally friendly practices can influence cultural change. The British Council in China and their sponsors provide a valuable international platform for doing this, which we are delighted to be associated with. It has been a pleasure to work with a very exciting team of young designers here in China, and these practices continue to feed into our work in Lincoln.”

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The 100 Lights exhibition opened in Guangzhou on Thursday 18th December 2014 with a launch event that was attended by guests from education, industry and the British Council. The collection will be shown in Beijing throughout this year, and could also form part of the British Council’s China UK Cultural Year in 2015.

One of the light creations – a five metre high construction entitled ‘Bamboo’ – has also been selected by an art gallery in Guangzhou to form a centre piece in its new gallery space.

Vanessa Li, Higher Education Manager for British Council China, said: “This 100 Lights project is one of the direct outcomes of the International Higher Education Collaboration on Upcycling of Industry Left-overs organised by the British Council. The University of Lincoln first joint the Upcycling programme in 2012 and has participated in each of the derived programmes since then, establishing links with more than 28 Chinese Higher Education institutions and companies.”

The 100 Lights project has been supported by sponsorship from a number of lighting companies in China, including PAK Lighting, which has supplied most of the LEDs used in the creation of the collection.

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Following the success of the 100 Lights exhibition, David Bramston is now planning to create a second collection ten times as large, called 1000 Lights. This ambitious project would support charities across China, providing opportunities for disadvantaged young people to help design and create the objects.

 

 

 

Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook

We are pleased to share that two of our College of Arts Senior Lecturers have collaborated and released a book on Studies in Architecture.

Angela Bartram works in live art, video, sculpture and published text. Bartram’s artwork has been included in a variety of exhibitions, including the Miami International Festival of Performance (2013); and at the gallery Grace Exhibition Space (New York 2012). She is a senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Lincoln.
Douglas Gittens is a researcher and senior lecturer at the Lincoln School of Architecture. He is also an active member of the Architectural Contexts Research Group and the Drawing Research Group at the University of Lincoln, and a member of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA). His research interests include spatial theory, the phenomenology of architecture, architectural representation and the documentation of architectural memory and lost space.

Overview –
Bringing together a broad range of contributors including art, architecture, and design academic theorists and historians, in addition to practicing artists, architects, and designers, this volume explores the place of the sketchbook in contemporary art and architecture. Drawing upon a diverse range of theories, practices, and reflections common to the contemporary conceptualisation of the sketchbook and its associated environments, it offers a dialogue in which the sketchbook can be understood as a pivotal working tool that contributes to the creative process and the formulation and production of visual ideas. Along with exploring the theoretical, philosophical, psychological, and curatorial implications of the sketchbook, the book addresses emergent digital practices by way of examining contemporary developments in sketchbook productions and pedagogical applications. Consequently, these more recent developments question the validity of the sketchbook as both an instrument of practice and creativity, and as an educational device. International in scope, it not only explores European intellectual and artistic traditions, but also intercultural and cross-cultural perspectives, including reviews of practices in Chinese artworks or Islamic calligraphy, and situational contexts that deal with historical examples, such as Roman art, or modern practices in geographical-cultural regions like Pakistan.

A copy of their book can be found at http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409468660

Hugh Byrd flies into the news

We always like it when our students get success. It’s what we’re here for, really. But it’s also pretty fantastic when our academics are recognised too. So imagine the smile on our faces when we learnt that Professor Hugh Byrd, from the BA(Hons) Architecture course, had seen his work included in The Guardian.

Hugh was talking about how power outages of the past could be an indication of more major blackouts in the future. We could tell you more, but the people at The Guardian are pretty good at writing a story so we’ll leave it up to them. You can read the full article here.

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