The Department of Design Research, Writing & Criticism at the School of Visual Arts is pleased to announce its 2017 Phil Patton Memorial Lecture on the evening of Tuesday, March 21, 2017. This year’s special guest speaker is Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in London.

This annual event is dedicated to Phil Patton (1952–2015), the acclaimed design journalist and much-loved SVA faculty member. Each year, the graduate department of Design Research invites a speaker whose current work resonates with Patton’s writing and research interests.

In his lecture “The Gods of Small Things,” Sudjic will nod to Patton’s legacy by considering the larger truths embedded in everyday objects. Invoking the investigations of design critics like Reyner Banham, Roland Barthes, and Adolf Loos, Sudjic will explore how the advent and proliferation of today’s technology through design has changed the world in previously inconceivable ways.

Deyan Sudjic is Director of the Design Museum in London. His career has spanned journalism, teaching and writing. Deyan was director of Glasgow UK City of Architecture 1999 and in 2002 he was Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. He was Editor of Domus Magazine from 2000 to 2004, and was Founding Editor of Blueprint Magazine from 1983 to 1996. Sudjic has published many books on design and architecture, including The Edifice Complex (Penguin, 2006), The Language of Things (Penguin, 2008), Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture (Orion, 2010), Shiro Kuramata (Phaidon, 2013) and B is for Bauhaus (Penguin 2014). His most recent book, Ettore Sottsass, the Poetry of Things, was published by Phaidon in September 2015. Sudjic was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2000.

Special thanks to A/D/O for hosting and collaborating on this event.
Image: The Design Museum in London, recently redesigned by OMA with Allies and Morrison and John Pawson. Photo by Gareth Gardner.