Here at TED we have been busy continuing to embed all our sustainable design thinking into the student's studio practice. Our latest project that tries out new ways to do this is called Inside/Outside, and is being sponsored and supported by Burberry.
The link between Chelsea College and Burberry is our location - we share the same neighbourhood by the Thames river at Millbank, and Burberry have been staging their twice-yearly fashion shows in our Parade Ground since 2009. In the 18th and 19th century, the site of the college used to be the infamous Millbank Prison, designed using Bentham's 'Panoptican' building design.
The project encourages students to uncover and revive vintage materials and historic processes that were current at the time of Millbank Prison, and to connect them to new, (often digital) textile processes and innovations of tomorrow.
Christopher Bailey, the Creative Director of Burberry has been to see the students and was keen to make the link between Burberry's heritage and his current design approach.
The programme includes a whole series of guest lecturers and workshops from people including Helen Carnac, curator of Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution, new TED PhD student Maddy Aspinall who will teach the traditional technique of smocking and Zane Berzina, visiting lecturer from Weissensee College in Berlin, who specialises in textiles and soft technologies.
Watch the project as it unfolds on the student blog.with regular reflections and thoughts from the TED researchers.
