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London Design Festival 2012: X3

X3 workshop Alex Hellum

Possibly the most exciting, and certainly the most immediate installation at the London Design Festival was X3 at Super Brands London, by London-based branding and graphic design studio Creative Research and Development.

X3 workshop Sam Weller

They built a glass-walled workshop, equipped it with tools and materials and then challenged three furniture designers to each create a chair in just six hours.

X3 workshop Sam Weller's Chair in foreground

Sam Weller, Alex Hellum and Jack Smith were the designers to take up the challenge and put their skills on show for the gathering crowds.

X3 workshop crowds

X1 was Sam Weller, who finished his chair just in time, putting the final wax on in the last few minutes.

X3 workshop Sam Weller

Sam has studied typography, industrial design and most recently product design at the RCA under Sebastian Wrong. His work has been exhibited all over Europe and he now runs his own studio in London.

Sam Weller X3 Chair

X2 was Alex Hellum. Alex even had time to add a lick of red paint to his chair and said: “I sat in my chair at four minutes past 7 PM and it didn’t break! It was a really good feeling and a great experience pushing my ‘bodging’ skills to the limit.”

X3 workshop Alex Hellum

Originally from Norway, Alex also studied at the RCA and has has designed for Heals, Thorsten Van Elten and Ercol. The most experienced of the three, his approach to design is based on: “observation, utility and honest use of materials.”

Alex Hellum X3 Chair Detail

X3 was Jack Smith. Another RCA graduate, Jack studied his undergraduate degree at Sheffield Hallem where he met Gemma Matthias, who he now runs his studio SmithMatthias with.

X3 workshop Jack Smith

Jack Smith X3 Chair

Perhaps inevitably, the chairs share an aesthetic, driven by the identical brief, tools and materials each designer had to work with – but perhaps also driven by  shared experience. What’s interesting though is how different they are, bearing all those things in mind.

X3 Chairs

The chairs are now being auctioned on eBay to raise money for a charity called UK Youth which helps young people to access “non-formal learning opportunities” including woodwork, carpentry and other hands-on design skills.

X3 workshop Alex Hellum

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.