Presented by MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism

2017 Phil Patton Memorial Lecture with Deyan Sudjic

Mar 21, 2017; 6:30 - 8:30pm
A large sign with the word "DESIGNER"
Credit: Design Museum in London, recently redesigned by OMA with Allies and Morrison and John Pawson. Photo by Gareth Gardner.

MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism is pleased to announce its 2017 Phil Patton Memorial Lecture with this year’s special guest speaker Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London. RSVP here.


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 critical investigations of writers 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.


Sudjic’s career has spanned journalism, teaching and writing. He has been director of London’s Design Museum since 2006, was director of Glasgow UK City of Architecture 1999 and in 2002 he was director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Sudjic was Editor of Domus magazine from 2000 to 2004 and was founding editor of Blueprint magazine from 1983 to 1996. He 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 and the Poetry of Things, was published by Phaidon in September 2015. Sudjic was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000.


Special thanks to A/D/O for hosting and collaborating on this event.


Free and open to the public