Rhino UK User Group Meeting 2019

Carlos Pérez Albà – studied Economics (University of Barcelona and Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg) and Illustration (Escola Massana Barcelona) and joined the Customer Support team at McNeel Europe in October 2000. Currently in charge of Sales, Marketing & Business Development for EMEA region and food4Rhino Product Manager.

Chris Johnson is the Industrial Design Lead for Pentland Brands, with responsibility for leading the design creation of equipment and footwear for the Speedo, Canterbury, Mitre and Berghaus brands. Chris has more than 20 years’ experience working within design and innovation consultancies and global sports brands. His work at Speedo spans four different Olympic Games product development cycles and has resulted in Red Dot design awards and multiple sports technology patents relating to garments, equipment and digital devices. He holds a bachelor’s degree in transport design from Coventry University and an MBA from Durham University Business School.

Since joining Heatherwick Studio in 2015, Pablo has been instrumental on Projects and the Geometry and Computational Design group.

As Head of Geometry and Computational Design at the studio, Pablo works across all studio projects providing expertise and guidance on new technologies and techniques, and the execution of challenging geometries.

He was Deputy Project Leader on Coal Drops Yard, an award-winning retail quarter and public space in King’s Cross, London. He oversaw all packages on the scheme and coordinated their delivery between the studio and the executive architect during Stage 3 and Planning. From Stage 4 onwards, he focused on assisting the team to take the design through contract and later into construction. He was key to the development and fabrication coordination for all complex geometry related areas on the project, most notably the Upper Level.

Prior to working at the studio Pablo was based at SOM London where he worked on a number of projects and competitions of multiple scales in Europe and the Middle East. One of his most notable projects was a high rise development of five towers with over 1,000 residential units in London’s Greenwich Peninsula, currently under construction.

Before relocating to London in 2010, his career was split between New York and Santiago, Chile, where he won international competitions and completed several projects. Pablo has lectured widely, and his personal work has been published and awarded internationally.

Selected Projects

Coal Drops Yard, London

Qualifications

MSc, Emergent Technologies and Design, Architectural Association, London, 2011

Architect License, Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2004

Bsc (Hons) Architecture, Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2003

Raised in Stevenage, Lee Simmons gained a First-Class Honours degree in metalwork and silversmithing from Sheffield Hallam University before undertaking an MA in the subjects at the Royal College of Art. He works from his recently-built studio in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.

His existing work can be found at 66 Wigmore Street London, in the Royal College of Art’s private collection, to date his clients have ranged from museums, galleries, public institutions, livery companies and Great Estates. Lee has won numerous awards including the New Designers Award 2009 for the best graduate in show and various awards with The Goldsmiths Company.

Lee’s portfolio of work can be found at www.leesimmons.com

Graham Hench has a degree in Quantitative Methods & Computer Science from the University of St. Thomas and over 10 years of experience in information technology (research and development, business development, management, and corporate innovation), currently working as the Associate Director Digital Ventures for Swarovski Professional, headquartered in Wattens, Austria.

Oliver Salway is a founding director of Softroom, an award-winning architecture and interiors studio based in central London. The practice has developed a particular specialism for sculptural interiors across a broad range of sectors, including hospitality, commercial and cultural spaces, as well as large-scale retail projects. Softroom has worked with some of the biggest commercial brands in the world, alongside grand public institutions. Major clients include the British Museum, V&A Museum, Eurostar and Virgin Atlantic, and awards range from a D&AD Yellow Pencil to the Stephen Lawrence Prize.

Karl Lenton spent six years in architectural education in Leeds and London, winning the John CASS Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2014. He is the Creative Director at Seeds and co-founder of architectural practice Burr Lenton Architecture (BLA). Karl was shortlisted for the RIBA South West Regional Live Project Award in 2014 and long listed for the RIBAJ MacEwen Award: Architecture for The Common Good in 2016 for his work on projects for vulnerable people. Karl is an appointed member of LeedsBID (Business Improvement District) designing public realm interventions that improve people’s wellbeing, productivity and happiness. Karl is the co-author of The Free Prisoner which he presented at Oxford University and RIBA. He has taught at Leeds Becketts University and has been a guest critique at MArch (Moscow School Of Architecture), The CASS, Brighton University and Central Saint Martins.

James Woodington is a Senior Industrial Designer at Safran Seats GB, James designs business class and first class aircraft interiors and has done so for 5 years. He was lucky enough to work on projects such as Skyroom for Singapore Airlines and the Optima platform which already has a number of customers. Additionally he is responsible for maintaining and improving the visual capabilities within the design department. With recently the integration of mixed realities into the company, which has already seen massive savings in the design process.

CARLOS BAUSA
I’m an architectural designer that works in the intersection between architecture, art, design, and academia. Thanks to parametric 3D modelling, and rendering tools, I shape my thoughts, and visualize them prior bringing them to life. I worked in Foster and Partners for the last four years and before I had the chance to collaborate with another architecture studio from Barcelona called External Reference. I have taught computational design in schools like the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the Institute of European Design in Barcelona.

All these years helped me to gain experience in the world of visualization and 3D modelling, and thanks to that it widened my vision regarding to what an architect can do with these tools. I have always felt the need to create new shapes and objects that could have an artistic touch, digitally fabricated, or hand crafted. I like getting in touch with the materials and explore the best way to be able to do it myself, at a scale that can be feasible for a person to manipulate all the components.

Because of that need of crafting things and creating design, in parallel to our professional work, my wife and I decided to set up our own design firm, Wild Design Studio. We created this firm to put together our design experiments and ideas. Explore design options with freedom and without corporative constrains, being able to create our own shapes and fabrication ideas. Thus being able to craft and visualize them at our own peace, in the ways we like the most.

DIRCE MEDINA
I’m an architect by definition but I prefer the term “designer” [in the making] as it suggest a wider range of areas you can move across, going through design, architecture, art and leaving room for more to come. The combination of rendering, parametric and fabrication tools, among others, have allowed me to shape my ideas, and having worked through the years in different studios have contributed greatly to this process, starting in Barcelona at EBMT, later in Mexico at FR-EE and currently as part of Heatherwick Studio.

The exposition to a variety of projects, have increased my personal interest for material experimentation and object crafting. Wild Design Studio emerges as the space for this curiosity with the commitment to test materials, fabrication and ideation processes and ultimately to test design to its limits