We are counting down the days to OFFSET London and we are delighted to have award winning designer and artist, Morag Myerscough speaking on Friday afternoon. Founder of Studio Myerscough and a founding member of Supergroup, Morag is a hero of ours, creating immersive and engaging places out of spaces. We caught up with her despite her very busy schedule to chat about her newest project, MIRAR — Ways of Seeing. Commissioned by the team at Abierto Mexicano de Diseño Festival and the British Council, this is a towering, building-sized Camera Obscura that is impossible to miss.
As part of the Design Festival and located at most significant public space in Zocalo, Mexico City, collaborators Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan have created an electrifyingly bright installation, which encourages visitors and passersby to change the way in which they see and engage with their surrounding.
What was the starting point for the installation?
The theme of the festival this year is ‘Solutions’. Design is the cornerstone of a production system. By deciphering a complex equation of needs, design proposes solutions that through a formal and functional synthesis, can integrate something with more value than the simple sum of its parts. What is the essence of design and designing. It is not the same for everybody. We were thinking about how we approach our work. We concluded that for us it is about seeing and thinking about things in many different ways from every angle, to turn it upside down, back to front, inside out, deconstruct & reconstuct. But this is only possible if you allow your mind to be open up and embrace the unknown.
As a designer how important is to continually change your perspective and how do you ensure you don’t get bogged down when trying to solve a problem through design?
I don’t try to change my perspective but I do re-evaluate my work all the time. I look at how effective it has been and how I can improve and develop areas, how much it stimulates me or not in the process. But my way of thinking remains constant.
Looking towards 2016 what projects have you got on the horizon?
I am always working on several projects and sometimes I only receive the brief months before completion. But at the moment the big ones will be the completion of the new Design Museum Collections Exhibition, London, a 200m piece based on my colour tweets in a hospital in Sweden and a regeneration art commission under the bridges at Finsbury Park, London. Unit Editions will be publishing a book on me & my work. But who knows what else is in store that is what makes it very exciting.
Morag Myerscough is speaking at 16:30, on Friday, 13th of November and tickets can be bought online from our website.
Photography by Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan.