Adrian Friend

Profession

Material and Spatial Practices Programme Director

Person Type

Staff

Biography

Adrian Friend is an award-winning architect, researcher and educator.

As lead scientist on TRADERS (Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation for Public Space), a 3 year EU Marie Curie ITN, Friend’s research on collaborative inter-disciplinary practices helped define Maker Architects’ exploring the art of assembly and tactics that extend authorship through the workshop as a site of production in ‘hot-rodding’ by component designed, citizen build kits.

Awarded an Innovate UK grant, ‘Flying Factory Autonomous Housing Construction’ (2015), for feasibility into multi-author prototypical systemised construction, Friend’s research was in partnership with the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), High Value Manufacturing Catapult.

Founding Director of award winning practice, Friend and Company Architects, Friend was shortlisted for Young Architect of the Year 2008. Practice work was selected by the Architecture Foundation in 2016 for publication in New Architects 3 (2016), a showcase of Britain's best emerging practices.

Latest project, New Shop for the Victoria & Albert Museum, sprung from research into the first museum shop that Friend found was a testbed for experimental pop-up structures. The final innovative design was Highly Commended in the 2017 Blueprint Awards deploying the world’s first 3D printed ceramic tile, reconnecting with material taxonomies first established by the V&A in 1865.

A champion of design research Friend writes for the leading international design and architecture publications including Blueprint, Wallpaper* and Building Design as well as publishes and presents his research through regular exhibitions and conference proceedings. Latest material research exhibited in ‘Hand Held to Super Scale: Building with ceramics’ (20 September 2019 - 8February 2020) The Building Centre, London.

As Programme Director, Material and Spatial Practices, Friend is co-director of the Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Design School Research Symposium held during London Craft Week. Titled, ‘Blame the tools: crafty robots, well behaved implements and disobedient devices’, the symposium showcased developments in digital tools that define makers and emerging ways to practice as well as social values and ethical construction methods found in repair and alterations.

Adrian Friend

Biography

Links

Camberwell

Chelsea

Chelsea College of Arts

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