Design in Dialogue
Carpenters Workshop Gallery
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At this year’s London Design Festival, Carpenters Workshop Gallery shines a spotlight on a trailblazer of twentieth-century modernism and a duo at the forefront of contemporary innovation.
Screened at Ladbroke Hall, the gallery’s west London venue, a pair of films about pioneering interior designer, furniture designer and architect Eileen Gray will explore her life and legacy. Viewers will be taken on a journey through E-1027, the house she designed and built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in south-eastern France in the 1920s, and into the mind of the icon herself, via a previously unreleased 1973 interview. ‘Eileen Gray’s work embodies values that are timeless,’ says Andrew Hodgkinson, Managing Director of Hodgkinson Design, who interviewed her in the film.
‘A century on, there are still important lessons to be learned from her focus and tenacity.’ A conversation between Philippe Garner, an authority on Eileen Gray, and Graeme Brooker, head of the Interior Design MA at the Royal College of Art, will dive deeper into her creative practice and design philosophy.
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Running in parallel is Lightness of Form, an exhibition of work by designer Terence Woodgate and engineer John Barnard, exploring the convergence between their disciplines. ‘The duo has collaborated since 2008, but we are the first gallery to commission them to jointly create a new series of artistically-driven works,’ says Loic Le Gaillard, co-founder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
During his time as engineer for McLaren, Barnard designed the first Formula 1 car made of carbon fibre, a material that is as pliable as it is strong. Woodgate’s sculptural tables, cabinets and seating – light, sturdy structures that take influence from artists and architects such as Donald Judd, Eduardo Chillida, Tadao Ando, and Luis Barragán – will demonstrate the material’s creative potential.
‘The result is an exploration of space, movement and minimalism, where Woodgate’s lucidity and coherence of concept merges with Barnard’s precise, detail-focused rigour,’ says Le Gaillard.
The project reveals how engineering can be elevated into a form of expression, and that design can gain new depth through precise, advanced technology.
Together, these two programmes act as a dialogue across eras and disciplines, revealing how the language of design has evolved and continues to today, and disrupting the boundaries between fine art, craft, science and industrial design.
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