Tutors: Dr Ro Spankie, Sam Aitkenhead, Diony Kypraiou, Allan Sylvester, Fiona Zisch

Sam Aitkenhead is a designer and maker working across architecture, interiors, graphics and product design. His work explores ways to reduce environmental impact through design and material innovation.

Diony Kypraiou is an architect and researcher. Her work deploys practices of drawing, writing, performance and installation design as investigatory tools to explore analogies between architecture, dramaturgy, psychoanalysis, and storytelling.

Dr Ro Spankie is fascinated by the role of the drawing in the design process and has exhibited and published work related to the interior both in the UK and Abroad. She is Associate Editor of the journal, Interiors: Design/Architecture/ Culture and is a founder member of Interior Educators.

Allan Sylvester is Visiting Lecturer, a practicing architect, and founding partner of Ullmayer Sylvester Architects, a design led, and multidisciplinary collaborative practice.

YEAR 3: Lunar Tour(ist)scapes

THIS YEAR CONSIDERED the theme of space tourism and challenged students to critically consider and creatively respond to the experiential conditions and ergonomic challenges that space tourism raises for the future of the world of design. With the guidance of practitioners and specialists from Virgin Galactic, students were asked to speculate on the interiors of the future as informed by the experience of space travel and its representation in fiction and sci-fi cinema by deploying narrative and design fiction.

The group participated in the Space Body Mediator workshop with BAIA Year 2 students, where they designed and prototyped prosthetics to t the human body and enable everyday actions in a zero-gravity environment. Term I concluded with the design of a terrestrial ‘Ready Room’ for would-be space travellers in the Castle Climbing Centre on Green Lanes, offering a simulated experience of the conditions of living in space.