about me
bertie hipkin
I'm a designer. as a kid I was always drawing cars and cities and then making air fix models, and scale trains, and then racing RC cars. I've always been blessed with a curiosity to know why things worked and how they did what they did. taking stuff apart, and hoping to be able to reassemble them afterwards
education
this curiosity (or distraction, depends how you look at it) suddenly started to prove its worth later in life as I began university. initially, I studied Mechanical Engineering, but found the field wasn't quite creative enough for me.
finding my place
after finishing the first year I decided to switch to a course I would find allowed more creativity. so I started studying graphic design, I had always enjoyed it most at school. but after another year, I felt I wasn't challenged enough. so I switched once more, this time to architecture. I hoped that the combination of aesthetic and balancing rational requirements would suit me well, and to be honest it did
the real world
I finished my undergraduate and then went to work in architecture practice. it didn't take long for the repetitious nature of the work to make me start questioning if a smarter way of working wasn't possible. I became aware of digital fabrication and offsite construction and realised these were the means to achieving architecture that made sense to me, not someone standing in the rain building a pastiche of a bygone era.
my place
so I then followed this new avenue in architecture by studiying 'Design for Manufacture' MArch at the bartlett in london. here I was encouraged to engage with the processes of design and making directly, using my hands to prototype, to understand the processes, and in turn to design better. if you don't understand the processes you are designing for, how can you design well?
falling into place
and here during my masters studies, my curiosity in things and how they worked started to make sense. I found I had creative solutions to problems where others were stuck, drawing on a back catalogue of inspiration that spanned anything and everything that had peaked my interest, ever.
present
I now work for one of the most technically competent timber manufacturers in the world. here I work as a parametric designer, preparing the design for manufacture on a 5-axis CNC machine the size of a small house. I am learning a lot, with a growing experience of intelligent design, but a yearning for more creativity again
what can I help you with?
I love design and solving problems
+ industrial design
+ architectural design
+ circular design
+ material design
+ parametric design
+ design writing
drop me a line
I love a creative challenge; a house, a hairbrush, a hand dryer, or anything in between.
I would love the chance to get involved with anything that requires some design, so drop me a line, and let’s see what happens.
what can I help you with?
I love design and solving problems
+ industrial design
+ architectural design
+ circular design
+ material design
+ parametric design
+ design writing
who am I?
Bertie Hipkin.
I have recently finished studying a masters in ‘Design for Manufacture’ (MArch) at the Bartlett School of Architecture within University College London.
I am a keen problem solver and hope to apply my skills to find answers to some of the issues we face, both big and small.
I am interested in a wide spectrum of things, and try to identify the knock-on effects of design decisions.
The ideas of using reed which I propose here were uncovered in the process of writing my masters thesis.
But felt the idea had great potential and deserved being taken further.
drop me a line
I love a creative challenge; a house, a hairbrush, a hand dryer, or anything in between.
I would love the chance to get involved with anything that requires some design, so drop me a line, and let’s see what happens.