risd connection: Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, 2008-09; Visiting Critic, Furniture Design + Graduate Studies, 1995-2008
roles at risd: In his new role as a dean, Rose is focused on developing and sustaining connections between Graduate Studies and RISD as a whole. One of his priorities for the 2008-09 academic year is to assist in the development of an Integrative Studies program — an initiative that draws on his experience in knowledge-building and creative workshop design, including recent cross-discipline ventures addressing professional practice and connections with science, engineering and the humanities. Rose’s interest in practice-based research at both the graduate and undergraduate levels has grown out of his experiences in art and design education in the UK, USA, Finland and India.
the road to risd: Rose is recognized for his leadership of Three Dimensional Design and Materials Practice at the University of Brighton — one of the best-known multidisciplinary design programs in the UK. He is also involved in a number of significant research initiatives in the UK and Europe, including supervising practice-based PhD work in art and design. He began teaching at RISD in 1995 as a visiting critic in the Furniture Design department and has since taught in the Industrial Design and Digital + Media departments, in addition to Graduate Studies.
about his research and creative work: In his early years as a furniture and interior designer and consultant, Rose shared a unique design studio with furniture artist Fred Baier and worked with Pearl Dot Furniture in London. His honors during this time include membership in the UK Crafts Council Index of Selected Makers and a Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers Guild award. Rose’s academic career got underway when he was invited to manage part of the independent Parnham Studio Furniture program and, later, the multidisciplinary arts and design program at Brighton, where he worked to strengthen the connections between research and practice and art, science and materials. His research interests include international cross-border projects such as sustainable transportation and public awareness of alternative materials. More information about his research and publications can be found at the websites of the University of Brighton Centre for Research & Development and the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design.
about his teaching: Much of Rose’s teaching has focused on the “simultaneous development of individualistic self-directed study and advanced research practice,” he explains, “together with equal emphasis on earlier stages of the creative adventure — so that the one can inform the other and a forward path for the individual can be imagined and fulfilled.” At the University of Brighton he has worked on internationalizing the curriculum, developing grant-aided creative teaching and learning projects at the forefront of this European effort. He has also supervised practice-based PhD studies.
insights: “The humor and the optimism that emerge if you get people together in a particular circumstance, and you set something up for those people to work together socially — you notice this wonderful emergent phenomenon that comes out of them because of what they are as people, not because of what they bought yesterday or which website they were looking at. There’s this amazing wealth of energy and visionary ideas that can be linked into and worked with, and that’s what I like to think I’ve spent my life trying to work with in various ways. I think that is a source of great richness.”
— from RadioReverb, radio station interview, Brighton, UK (July, 2008)
“We know as much as our means of expression, engagement, our ‘lart’ allows us to know, since we can know only what we have attempted to share, explain, present or negotiate”
— from Five Essays on Design, 2006
education BA, Industrial Design Engineering, Central School of Art, London MA, Furniture Design, Royal College of Art, London
