[CANCELLED] Design Open Event: Transforming

About the event

Design Open is an initiative developed by the Directors of Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Lidia Gasperoni, dedicated to advancing architecture and design through dialogic, practice-based exchange.

The inaugural event, Design Matters (12 November 2025), was realised as an open table bringing together design objects contributed by staff members. Through their collective presence, these objects spoke the language of design, revealing a breadth of skills, ideas, and transformative effects embedded in material practice.

Building on this, Transforming (13 May 2026) is a collaborative invitation to the staff members of the Bartlett School of Architecture to assemble a large table dedicated to the collective display of a multitude of artefacts. The table operates as both a spatial and discursive device: a setting in which artefacts can be brought into relation, examined together, and discussed as active carriers of meaning. 

The central aim is to reflect on the kinds of transformations these artefacts embody and enact. Their effects may be diverse and operate across different domains:

• How do artefacts intersect and modify the processes of designing and building?
• In what ways might they initiate new modes of practicing architecture?
• How do they transform material knowledge, or contribute to the revision and expansion of existing theoretical and historical considerations?
• How do artefacts connect and mediate different scales, research interests and collaborations?
• And where might their still unexamined potentialities lie? 

At the same time, the event invites reflection on the languages and formats through which such transformations can be articulated. 

Which vocabularies allow us to describe the changes artefacts bring about? 

Transforming approaches this question through the collective presence of artefacts and the dialogues they generate—opening a field of inquiry that remains deliberately unfinished and open to further exploration. 

Respondent

Prof. Matthias Ballestrem is an architect and since 2024 Professor of Fundamentals of Architecture at the Technische Universität Dortmund. From 2022 to 2024 he was founding program director of the Bauhaus Earth Fellowship Program at Bauhaus Earth and co-manag-ing director of Experimental. From 2017 to 2022 he was professor for Architecture and Experimental Design at the HafenCity University in Hamburg. Since 2006, he has held other teaching positions at various institutions, including Cornell University, the CIEE GAD Berlin Program, and TU Berlin from 2006-2018. Matthias Ballestrem received his PhD from the TU Berlin on implicit visual spatial perception. His research focuses on the methodologies of design-driven research, experimental design, space perception, spatial complexity and the architectural typologies of interior spaces. Matthias represented the HCU Hamburg in the Erasmus+ Project “Collective Evaluation of Design Driven Doctoral Training” (2019-22). He is a member of the Research Academy Workgroup of the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE). 

Vicky Richardson is an independent curator, writer and educator specialising in contemporary and twentieth century architecture and design. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, she has held senior positions in museums, cultural and educational institutes including as Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council. From 2010 to 2016 she was Commissioner of the British Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale.