Self-initiated projects are demonstrating that the urge to create is stronger than ever as designers, architects and writers operate in a market that can be crowded and short of opportunities. HEL/LO – Let’s Talk About Dreams invites a panel of speakers who have created publications, manifestos, buildings, products and events that have had an impact in London and Helsinki, to discuss the proactive nature of their work.

The speakers for the event are Helsinki-based architect and designer, Hella Hernberg and Olli Sirén, producer and initiator of groundbreaking community projects together with the London-based designer Asif Khan and the young architectural practice Mobile Studio.

HEL/LO – Let’s Talk About Dreams is first in a series of four events, organised by The Finnish Institute in London, called HEL/LO – Let’s Talk. They bring together architecture and design professionals from London and Helsinki for a lively discussion and exchange of ideas throughout the year.

The event series is accompanied by the HEL/LO – Let’s Talk blog, www.helloletstalk.fi, where participants along with other contributing design and architecture professionals from Helsinki and London continue the dialogue.

The series is organised in collaboration with Blueprint magazine and is an international satellite event for World Design Capital Helsinki 2012.

The event is free but booking is essential as places are limited. Please book your seat here.

The Speakers:

Hella Hernberg
Hella is a Helsinki-based architect and designer. Her main inspiration comes from a creative use of leftover materials; be it fabrics, attics or urban spaces. HEL/LO will be the London launch for Helsinki Beyond Dreams, a book on new urban culture in Helsinki, published by Urban Dream Management and edited by Hella.
www.hellahernberg.com

Olli Sirén
Awarded the title Citizen of the Year 2012 in Helsinki, Olli specialises in creating participation through social media. His proactive approach has been instrumental in a number of recent events and concepts in Helsinki including the Restaurant Day, We Love Helsinki Soiva Kortteli (Sounds on the Block) and Kuorokäytävä (Choir Corridor).
www.ollisiren.fi

Asif Khan
London born designer Asif Khan studied architecture  at the Bartlett school, UCL and at the AA in London finishing his training in 2007. Khan has a particular eye for projects that combine each of his respective fields of interest and recently launched a multidisciplinary collaborative practice with Pernilla Ohrstedt, a fellow graduate of the Bartlett School. His completed projects include West Beach Café, Littlehampton (2008), Tetra Light (2007), Swivel for Danese Milano (2011), and furniture for primary schools in Malawi with Magis for the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (2009-12).
www.pernilla-asif.com

Mobile Studio
Mobile Studio is a young, London-based architectural practice. Directors, Max Dewdney and Chee-Kit Lai, also run an award-winning BSc Degree Unit at the Bartlett, UCL, and are visiting critics at a number of leading UK universities. Nominated for Young Architect of the year award in 2008, the practice is actively involved in cultural and socially aware projects within the public realm. It is a design-orientated practice, and places a strong emphasis on collaborative working and public engagement.
www.themobilestudio.co.uk

About Lisbon IN Motion

Lisbon IN Motion is about sound, light and movement. It is conceived as an interactive video-installation, aiming to create informal and spontaneous appropriation of the public space, through a censorial experience. Starting from contact-improvisation dynamics and wearing headphones that isolate and amplify each sound of the city, participants create their own urban experience.

Participants move forward and backward riding up and down through the seven hills of the city with the beats of the knife sharpener, claxons, brakes, and construction works. All of them running in parallel with the gradations of sun light throughout the day.

The mechanical movement of a tram contains the sound of the city. Introduced in the 19th century, the yellow trams are a traditional form of public transport in Lisbon, and were originally built in England, all polished wood and chrome. The old yellow trams still employ four wheel vehicles designed in the early 20th century.

http://cristinart.com/2012/02/15/lisbon-in-motion/

About Cristina Zabalaga

Cristina Zabalaga is a full time writer and a visual artist based in Lisbon. Her work explores the interaction between writing, photography and video-art.

http://cristinart.com/

Ten years have passed since the end of Angola’s civil war, in 2002. Since then, the country’s neoliberal trajectory, fuelled by the burgeoning oil industry, has turned its capital, Luanda, into the World’s most expensive city. However, current debates fall short on grasping the numerous stakeholders in Angola’s recent development, mainly because they fail to embrace aspects of urban “informality”.

This show delves into the hidden territories of Luanda, which turns out to be far more complex than a commonplace “global city” surrounded by desperate “informal settlements”. Which aspects tie the urban continuum together? How does the city work?

A collection of visual elements and artifacts, produced during on-site participatory workshops and off-site research and editing, contribute to address these questions. The materials result from an ongoing dialogue between planning entities and city-dwellers, ranging from local authorities and citizens, to NGOs and architecture students.

The pop-up show will include the screening of two short films featuring testimonies from Angolan urban migrants and former Portuguese colonizers, focusing on social and spatial circumstances before and after Angola’s independence (1975). The launch of a book edited by Paulo Moreira – consisting of a comprehensive compilation of original contributions by emerging and established experts, practitioners and researchers from different fields, reflecting the contents of the exhibition – will be followed by a closing party.

Click here to watch the video from the event

Exhibition Schedule

Thursday 5th April 2012

11:00    Opening

11-19    Public viewing & guided visits by request

19:00    Screening of 2 short films – UK premiere

20:00    Book launch & conversation

21:00    Party

23:00    Close

Queries: moreirapaulo@gmail.com

Paulo Moreira (Porto, 1980) is an architect (FAUP, 2005) and a researcher at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design, London Metropolitan University (since 2010). He was the recipient of the Noel Hill Travel Award (AIA – UK Chapter) and the Prize for Social Entrepreneurship (FASD), both in 2009.

www.paulomoreira.net

The illustration is the first of The Gopher Hole’s annual commissions to an emerging designer.     Shin-Hye has made ‘Year One 2011′ in the style of a primary school tea-towel, using different drawing techniques – sometimes using her left hand – to illustrate some of the figures who have contributed to The Gopher Hole during the year.

We hope you like it.

About Shin-Hye Lee 

Shin-Hye Lee has recently graduated from BA Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. She grew up somewhere between Seoul and London for the last 10 years. Shin-Hye is interested in all forms of design, and hovers between graphics, illustration and creating products.

http://www.shinhyelee.com

http://blog.shinhyelee.com

http://secrethabit.tumblr.com

http://www.trienaldelisboa.com

A pop up event featuring three emerging artists from Chelsea College of Art & Design. Working in different media within the context of everyday life the event transforms the Gopher Hole into the world of spirituality.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

1st stanza of ‘Auguries of Innocence’

by William Blake

Artists include:

Francis Ky Chu

Jess Huang

Aixin Luo

Private view: Thursday 2 Feb, 6-9:30pm -with complimentary first drink(!)

P.E.A.R: Issue No4 Launch Event

The launch party for the fourth issue of P.E.A.R.(Paper for Emerging Architectural Research) will include a special performance of a brand new sound work by Edwin Burdis titled FOR IT IS A PEAR (Starting at 8pm).

The fourth issue of the Paper for Emerging Architectural Research considers dwelling.

Contributors include Edwin Burdis; Matthew Butcher (Post Works) with Tom Noonan; Francisco Camacho with Alberta Sessa; Jonathan Griffin and Mateo Tannatt; Torange Khonsari (public works) with Megan O’Shea; David Kohn Architects with Fiona Banner; Aleksandra Mir; Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer; Jane Rendell; Neil Spiller; Ben Sweeting with Permanent Waver (Tim Norman, Pernilla Ohrstedt and Matthew Wilkinson).

Chartered Society of Designers: Book Launch 

In celebration of the publishing of Design, Creativity and Culture: an orientation to design, The Gopher Hole is proud to present a discussion on design futures with Maurice Barnwell.

About the Book

Design, Creativity, and Culture: An Orientation to Design is unique in offering a fresh and innovative approach to assessing the cross-cultural, multidisciplinary nature of design. This book is objective and free from overt bias. It references design history, design process, cultural studies, media studies, visual culture, political culture, and information technologies. It is inclusive, making reference to the full spectrum of design disciplines, providing examples from architecture, interior, product, graphic and fashion design, from a variety of cultures.

Design, Creativity, and Culture provides examples and illustrations from a wide range of recognized topics from the Big Bang to The Matrix, cave wall drawings to Twitter and modernism to mass culture. Design, Creativity and Culture is an inclusive, cross-cultural study of design that will make readers question design and culture.

About the Author

Maurice Barnwell is Professor at Ryerson University and lives in Toronto, Canada.

Create presents: Some Think Funky 

Some Think Funky was created as a visual idea of how we can learn, adapt and discover new experimental ways to showcase ourselves within today’s creative world.

This exhibition is the first curated by Christopher Hall, Ziya Mustafa and The Institute of IDEAs.

Exhibition Schedule

Wednesday 23rd November

18:00      Private View & Designer’s Market

19:30      Artist’s talks (open to public)

20:30      Meet & Greet (open to public)

22:30      Close

Thursday 24th November

12:00      Public Viewing

17:00      Close

20:00      Closing Party

00:00      Close

RSVP: hello@ChrisRHallDesign.com

Emerging Group: Mistakes
The Gopher Hole is proud to present a series of short talks curated by Emerging Group.

Emerging Group is a place for ‘young’ architects/designers to meet, discuss, and collaborate on a range of projects/events including exhibitions, debates, publications, and building projects. Through this we hope to promote and engage with emerging ideas and practices, in architecture and the wider design field.

To date, this is the extent of our mission, since what the group is and what it becomes is wholly dependent on the people who choose to participate.
The group should be used to celebrate young practitioners, stimulate enthusiasm and explore new ideas.

It is open to everyone who is interested.

The theme this time around is ‘Mistakes’

‘Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better’

Speakers include:
Scanlab
00:/ Architecture
We Made That
Ruairi Glynn of Interactive Architecture
Warmbaby

and more to follow…

Internet Week Europe: BERG presents Tomorrow’s World
An evening of 10min talks about the near-future of software, culture, networks and things curated by BERG.

Speakers:
James Bridle: The Near-Future New Aesthetic
Fiona Romeo: The Near-Future of Citizen Science
Karsten Schmidt: The Near-Future of Design
Alice Taylor: The Near-Future of Toys
Matt Webb: The Near-Future of Product
Warren Ellis: The Near-Future of Pop

Cash bar / talks start at 7.30pm