Nassia Inglessis of Studio INI has created a spectacular installation that engages and disrupts viewers perceptions of space and structure. Mariam Majid has designed an installation celebrating the creative work of female artisans in Pakistan’s cotton textile industry. Nathalie Harb’s designs for urban environments, including The Silent Room, are intended to counter social segregation in cities like her native Beirut, and respond to growing levels of noise pollution.
The panel, chaired by Charlotte Fiell, co-author of the book Women in Design, also considers the issue of diversity in the design sector worldwide.
Biographies
Charlotte Fiell and her husband Peter are leading authorities on the history, theory and criticism of design and have written over fifty books on the subject, including “Women in Design” to be published by Laurence King in 2019. Charlotte studied at the British Institute in Florence, and at Camberwell College of Arts (UAL) and Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. In the late 1980s the Fiells opened a design gallery in London’s King’s Road, before becoming freelance authors, editors, and publishing consultants in 2013.
Nathalie Harb [Lebanon] is a multi-disciplinary scenographer. Her work explores the history of public and private spaces, with a focus on themes of home, shelter and exile. Her projects have been presented in cities across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and have spanned urban interventions, film, theatre, interiors and events. She lives and works between London and Beirut.
Nassia Inglessis [Greece] is an Artist and Design Engineer based in London and Athens. She founded Studio INI as an experimental design studio with a human centric approach to explore matter in the context of cognition. With a technical foundation in Engineering science (Oxford University & Imperial College London) and training in art & design (The Royal College of Art & MIT Media Lab) Nassia and her team are naturally driven to address technology in its etymological aspect of τέχνη (art /skill) and λογία _(reason/science).
Marjam Majid [Pakistan] is Writer and Director at Wagging Tongues Productions. She has a degree in Sculpture from the National College of Arts Pakistan and over twenty years of experience in the field of arts and drama. The writer and director of the Jungly Jadoogar series, she is also currently pursuing a post-graduate degree in Filmmaking from Kingston University. As a mother of three, she felt it was her duty to help strengthen the British Asian identity of her community, harnessed to its roots yet branching out into the global culture of the world.