GET IT LOUDER (UK Exhibits)
London Guest City programme of Beijing Design Week
Talking Innovation
Design UK Front Page
IYDEY 2007 Award
IYDEY 2006 Award
Design in the UK
Design UK Virtual Exhibition
Sam Buxton
When Sam Buxton needed a new business card rather than make “a boring printed card”, he devised one which reflected his work as a product designer. By deploying a chemical milling process used in the electronics industry, he produced a fine flat stainless steel card which unfolded into a 3-D miniature of himself using a computer. Buxton has since created other miniatures of the same character, MIKRO-Man, in different guises and a MIKRO-House. Like all his work, the MIKRO series combines Buxton’s preoccupation with the possibilities of technology with a talent for narrative drawing. Born in London in 1972, Sam Buxton studied furniture design at Middlesex University and the Royal College of Art. After collaborating with fellow RCA graduate Mathias Bengtsson, he has worked on his own developing commercial projects for Kenzo and Habitat as well as the MIKRO series. His unusual, techno-baroque design language got him selected by the British Council and Design Museum for the inaugural Great Brits exhibition at Paul Smith’s European headquarters in Milan for the Furniture Fair in 2003. He was shortlisted for Designer of the Year 2004 at London’s Design Museum and is currently a consultant to Vauxhall Motors. Buxton has ploughed his MIKRO royalties into prototyping other products such as this Electroluminescent Table, which he conceived as an experiment in interaction between furniture and the human body. The table also deploys display technology to demonstrate the degree to which the information surrounding us can be present – or communicated back to us – in objects.
