Adrian Friend

Biography

Adrian Friend is an award winning architect, researcher and educator. As lead scientist on TRADERS (Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation for Public Space), a three year EU Marie Curie ITN, Friend’s research on collaborative inter-disciplinary practices helped define Maker Architects’ exploring the art of assembly and tactics that extend authorship through the workshop as a site of production in ‘hot-rodding’ by component designed, citizen build kits. Awarded an Innovate UK grant, ‘Flying Factory Autonomous Housing Construction’ (2015), for feasibility into multi-author prototypical systemised construction, Friend’s research was in partnership with the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Latest ‘robotic craft’ prototypes designed by Adrian include the Robotic Craft Tile (2017), recently exhibited at ‘Hand Held to Super Scale: Building with Ceramics’ (2020), and research on robotic materialisation of architectural hybridity – the gizmo gumption that fuels processes of amelioration, extending our knowledge of ethical construction methods and practices of repair.

Founding Director of award winning practice, Friend and Company Architects, Friend was shortlisted for Young Architect of the Year 2008 and practice work was selected by the Architecture Foundation in 2016 for publication in New Architects 3 (2016), a showcase of Britain's best emerging practices. Latest project, New Shop for the Victoria & Albert Museum, sprung from research into the first Museum Shop that Friend found was a testbed for experimental pop-up structures. The final innovative design was Highly Commended in the 2017 Blueprint Awards deploying the world’s first 3d printed ceramic tile, reconnecting with material taxonomies first established by the V&A in 1865. A champion of design research Friend writes for the leading international design and architecture publications including Blueprint, Wallpaper* and Building Design as well as publishes and presents his research through regular exhibitions and conference proceedings.

As Programme Director, Material & Spatial Practices, Friend is an active research supervisor and co-director of the CCW Design School Research Symposium held during London Craft Week 2020. Titled, ‘Blame the tools: crafty robots, well behaved implements and disobedient devices’, the symposium will showcase developments in digital tools that define Makers and emerging ways to practice as well as social values and ethical construction methods found in repair and alterations.