Interior Educators conference 2024

Why go to a design conference?

At the end of last year, I attended the Interior Educators Practice 2024 conference at Northumbria University in Newcastle. Conference themes were adaptive reuse, material reset, and creative practice, and it was attended by educators, students, and creative and research practitioners. But why is it important to attend events like this, and how can it help you—as students—in your education?

The main reason to seek out opportunities such as these is that it helps you keep up to date with current thinking (around whatever the subject matter is) and exposes you to new ideas that you may not have thought about before. Conference speakers range from established practitioners, professors, and lecturers to early-career researchers and PhD students, so the range of topics presented and discussed (yes, you can ask questions too) is broad and varied. There may well be new ideas emerging that others have not previously thought of.

The topics discussed are usually ‘hot’ topics—those that are being talked about in design circles across the globe right now—but there may be different points of view or new ways of thinking about those known topics. There will be two or three ‘keynote’ speakers who are most often established and well known for their particular practice and ethos, and at this conference those were Dr. Jane Hall from Assemble, Jonathan Tuckey from Tuckey Design Studio, and Lionel Devlieger, founder of Rotor. It is great to be able to hear these people—experts in their field—talking about their work and the current thinking around ‘hot’ topics.

Jonathan Tuckey gave us a general overview of the work that his practice does, focusing on the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. He also spoke in particular about the Michelberger Hotel project in Berlin, where the design incorporated clever use of existing double-height spaces to form intimate, cozy hotel rooms in what was formerly a large industrial cigarette factory.

Alongside the keynote addresses were other talks from researchers and academics discussing ideas around the main theme for the event—adaptive reuse in interior design—or ‘how can we use the materials and spaces that already exist, rather than demolishing built spaces and creating something entirely new?’. In addition to the talks, there were displays of creative work—written, photographic, visual, and three-dimensional—again, exploring ideas around adaptive reuse and new ways of looking at the value placed on different types of materiality.

In general terms—today—contemporary spatial design practice is often seen as the creation of ‘new’ spaces, assembled from ‘new objects.’ The speakers at this conference challenge that idea and instead champion investigation into a different way of thinking; they begin their design process acknowledging that a new space can be created or assembled (designed if you like) from previously used components and materials. They come to spatial designing from the perspective of reuse as a fundamental part of the way in which they design.

If you’d like to find out more about the work of the keynote speakers, you can research their practice websites at:

https://assemblestudio.co.uk/

https://tuckeydesign.com/

https://www.rotordb.org/en

Can students attend these conferences, and should they?

Yes, of course students can attend—you are the future of the interior spatial design world, and as such, your input is really valuable. You may be learning right now and feel that there is much that you do not yet know, but (spoiler alert) we are all learning—constantly—even those most established in their practice. And there is always much more to know. Interior spatial design, as a practice, is constantly changing as the world around us changes. Keeping up to date with current (changing) thinking is vital, and filling up your store of knowledge is an ongoing process for all of us.

Plans are already underway for the next Interior Educators conference, to be hosted at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh, in November this year. The conference theme will be Imagining Interiors, which opens up the possibility of myriad new and established ideas to be presented and discussed. If you are close to Edinburgh and interested in attending, there will be more information closer to the date, but keep an eye out online at https://interioreducators.co.uk/ in the meantime.