BA (Hons) Interior Design Environment Architectures
Chris Hall

“I came to Ravensbourne as it had been recommended to me as the place to develop my skills. No other university offered such strong links to the outside world – I believed I could be learning real skills from real professionals.

“Studying the IDEAs course means you learn how to design the interior, exterior, furniture, graphics, and photography, as well as how to present and pitch a project in a professional manner. This diversity in what you learn and do really appealed to me.

“Ravensbourne has given me a real hunger to learn. After this course I would like to study abroad for a year and eventually aim to become a fully qualified architect and run my own company.”

Posted: 20 December 2011

Achievements of 2011

2011 has been a year of many interesting new insights into the working world of Interior Design and Environment Architecture.

The first term of the third year started with writing my dissertation on the idea of what was the need for exhibiting, and why do we exhibit? This then created a major resource point for my work and eventually became intertwined as part of my enterprise and entrepreneur project. The brand became Some Think Funky.

With Some Think Funky, I went to the levels of curating my own exhibition which lead on to gain a large amount of press from Time Out, Architects Journal, Trebucket < http://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/index.php/site/event/some_think_funky_exhibition/ > and many other online design blogs and websites.

The aim and manifesto of Some Think Funky is:

“The way in which we exhibit is under attack. In recent years curators, gallery owners and collectors have seemingly dictated what we, the observer, should find thought-provoking.

“Prior to the Great Exhibition of 1851, there were concerns that Britain was lacking in training in the fields of art and industry. The solution was to create a platform on a grand scale to showcase to the world what Britain had to offer.

“We feel that this idea of a platform has been forgotten. We propose to reinstate this idea by curating a series of exhibitions titled only by subject allowing those involved to express their true creative inner desires. This should represent a genuine account to what is current in that particular field of creativity.

“Due to the current economic climate it has become more and more common for young people to either continue with their studies or to work for companieski, both scenarios conclude in the creative individuals being restricted. These restrictions are applied through briefs and project managers, which tend to constrict creativity in exchange for box ticking and profit.

“By using a series of underground London based galleries and venues we would like to give these creatives the opportunity to showcase their work using a collaborative stage. This will become an opportunity for these young creatives to work in an open fashion, allowing individuals to be free to think out of the box and develop new ideas. We believe that this approach will help young people to develop their skills that in turn will come through their ideas in the future, thus, benefiting us all.”

Working on from this I have been designing for the RSA competition, based around the idea of how to reuse abandoned petrol stations and also how we can reincorporate the elderly into the modern society and into London and other key cities. The reasoning behind this is that there are so many elderly people in London who don’t want to be moved away from the city, but as there are so many elderly homes in out of city locations, such as Kent, it seems to be one of the most viable options. This is something that my current thought process, and design ethos is using as a major influence. Expanding onwards from this is that there needs to be a reuse of abandoned petrol stations. As there are so many that are no longer in use because the ‘supermarket powers’ are buying out companies and effectively making it more convenient by offering us points on our club cards, etc, as a way to save whilst buying petrol. Therefore, a lot become abandoned or built on with low cost housing. The proposal for the RSA looks at combining these two main ideas, and integrating them into a concept that could be used worldwide; incorporating the elderly, electric cars, their storage and charging and the use of abandoned sites.

Over the Christmas holiday I have been undertaking some freelance work, which incorporates the redesign and redevelopment of Plumbridge Street, Greenwich. We held a Christmas market and a pop-up stool which allowed the public to come in and view the size of the units with the aim of drumming up interest on bringing in businesses. I did a series of visuals for the street design and I am currently working on the master plan and future proposal of the street on what can be done with the area.

If you would like to see some of my work check out my website: www.chrisrhalldesign.com, or my blog: http://somethinkfunky.blogspot.com

To add onto this, now I have been appointed the creative director of Ravensbourne 2012 (our degree show), a new challenge for the new year with the undertaking of the final major project.

Hello, let me introduce myself…

Currently for me I have just finished my third project of this year: a market factors project transforming a building in Covent Garden into a shop with a secondary function that gives something back to the local area.

The final review involved two qualified architects, who are tutors and an external lecturer who is the creative director of Household, a company that specializes in refitting retail units.

My aim was to create a surreal landscape that gave the shopper the feeling of being taken away into his or her own little world, something that would be classed as radical and brave but would also intrigue the public. Technology was something that needed to be implemented, so I used holograms to portray the garments into the space, as well as having virtual screens that will allow you to see yourselves in the garments while but they will still be accessible to try on physically. Externally I have just helped to do the graphics and design for an exhibition in Liverpool for FACT Gallery with Aberrant Architecture as well as designing a school playground with Harry Dobbs. I feel that gaining this extra work experience and working on live projects has just helped my urge to learn to get larger and larger.