Preview Evening

The highlight of the evening was the FX Live Debate entitled 'Material People'.  The evening was chaired by Aidan Walker for FX Magazine who was joined by a diverse panel of professionals whose work depends on their ‘material stories’ and who explained their vision, road to definition, design and discovery, and their application of their special materials to create a better world.

Aidan Walker
Aidan’s MA in History from Cambridge University was a highly appropriate education, he claims, for his ‘first career’ in furniture design and cabinetmaking – itself an admirable preparation for 20 years of writing for, editing and directing design magazines. He has editorially directed almost all the professional UK design magazines, including FX, Blueprint, Design, and most recently Grand Designs, icon and onoffice. He now runs AidanWalker.co.uk, an editorial and communications consultancy, writing, editing and creating conference and seminar programmes for the architecture, design and publishing industries.

Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh
Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh is the Irish inventor of sugru, an innovative new product that has been called 'the best invention since sellotape' and that's getting DIY'ers, gadget lovers and outdoors enthusiasts around the world very excited.

Read Jane's full biography here.

Laura Ellen Bacon
The work of Laura Ellen Bacon has been described as, ‘monumental’, ‘uncanny’, ‘compelling’ and ‘beautifully strange’. Laura’s contemporary sculptures were initially inspired by nest-like forms and she has since developed her own unique language with materials – a language that communicates the properties of the materials she uses and her strong desire to turn chaotic amounts of raw materials into ‘spaces’ of some kind.

Read Laura Ellen's full biography here.

Rachel Armstrong
Rachel Armstrong is a Co-Director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) in Architecture & Synthetic Biology atThe School of Architecture & Construction, University of Greenwich, London. 2010 Senior TED Fellow, and Visiting Research Assistant at the Center for Fundamental Living Technology, Department of Physics and Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark.

 Read Rachel's full biography here.

Tom Davies 
Tom Davies is the creator of TD Tom Davies, the first eyewear brand to custom make frames.

Read Tom's full biography here.