Andrew Sleigh

Today’s guest, Kazys Varnelis, helps me take a look at today’s maker culture through the lens of the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as the many DIY and counter-culture movements that sprang up in the second half of the 20th Century. We talk about making as a startup culture, and making as a form of…

Thomas Lommée is a designer who maintains the OpenStructures project, a “construction system where everyone designs for everyone.” OpenStructures is an experiment that explores what happens when people design objects using a common open standard — allowing for objects to be reconfigured or adapted over time, and parts to be swapped out, exchanged or added to create new objects. It’s…

This week, I talk with Sara Hendren about the role of art in engineering and design, and how we can make use of unresolved questions, ambiguity and productive uncertainty, to make things that better serve human needs. Sara teaches socially-engaged design practices, adaptive and assistive technology design, and disability studies for engineers-in-training in her role…

This episode features the woodworker, writer and publisher Chris Schwarz. Chris runs the small publishing company, Lost Art Press, which specialises in finely made books on hand-working practices. He uncovers historical texts that show us forgotten ways of working, and also publishes new work, such as The Anarchist’s Design Book, that show the continuing relevance…

In this episode I talk to two guests who share an interest in remaking the world around them, First, we head over to Baltimore, to meet Will Holman, whose book, Guerrilla Furniture Design, is a handbook for the resourceful, nomadic maker. Then we come back to London, to meet Pascal Anson, a designer who specialises…

We talk about the work of the pioneering scientist, feminist and educator, Ursula Franklin, whose book, The Real World of Technology, helps us understand how things are made in modern systems of manufacturing, and how the technology of manufacturing has changed relations in the workplace. We also talk about what motivates people to make; mundane…

Hello, and welcome back to Looking Sideways. I took a long hiatus after the first series, but now I’m back with a new series of interviews focusing on making. In this series, I set out to explore the world of making from the individual craftsperson, to the mass manufacture of  products. I wanted to understand the…