Dr Paul Thompson and Deyan Sudjic talk about excelling in [...]


Downtown Design Auditorium, Downtown Design tent, Dubai Design District (d3)

Dr Paul Thompson, Rector of the Royal College of Art, and Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in London, talk about excelling in leading Design institutions, and the role those institutions play in the strategic development of a national Design industry.

Moderated by Fred A. Bernstein.

Paul Thompson is the Rector of the Royal College of Art, the world’s oldest art school in continuous operation, and the only art and design university in the UK operating exclusively at postgraduate level. Prior to 2009, Paul was Director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York (from 2001-2009), and Director of the Design Museum in London (from 1993-2001). He is an Adjunct Professor at the Innovation in Global Health Institute, Imperial College London, a Trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is on the Ashmolean Museum Board of Visitors. He was also Chair of the Advisory Board for Fabrica in Italy 2011-2014. In early 2012 he was awarded a Fellowship of the City and Guilds of London Institute.

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. Deyan 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) and Shiro Kuramata (Phaidon, 2013). His most recent book, B is for Bauhaus, was published by Penguin in March 2014. Deyan was made an OBE in 2000.