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Interview with Martin Summers |
Home > Designer Interviews > Martin Summers |
Editor Frank Scott (FS) from DesignPRWire has interviewed designer Martin Summers (MS) for A’ Design Award and Competition. You can access the full profile of Martin Summers by clicking here.
FS: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
MS: I was always artistic and came by it somewhat naturally. My father was a photographer and artist and we were surrounded by his work when growing up. My grandfather on my father's side was a carpenter and I remember his tools and tiny workspace as a child. As a child, I would constantly draw and use my imagination when drawing or making things and was drawn toward scale model kits and the process of making them with a particular attention to the details of the kits, the decals, and painting. My uncle on my mother's side of the family was a priest and at a very early age suggested that I consider architecture as a profession because of my artistic abilities and desire to make things. That stuck in my head and I applied for college with that sole purpose, to become an Architect.
FS: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
MS: PLUS-SUM (pronounced PLUS SUM) is a contemporary design practice focused on projects where strategic, systemic, and progressive ideas can be brought to bear on complex and dynamic design problems. Projects vary across type and scale and are always seeking new opportunities to uniquely express client goals and aspirations. We believe that design can add value to any situation, synthesizing disparate and conflicting issues, while revealing intangible qualities that stir the spirit, engage the intellect and activate the senses. Projects emerge from a rigorous process that produces innovative responses and pragmatic solutions.The name PLUS-SUM attempts to express this deep and integrated process via a multi-layered meaning and reflects our commitment to developing work responsive to the unique combinations of client, program, site, technology, and culture.The primary meaning of PLUS-SUM can be understood via strategic solutions in game theory, where it is described as a "win-win" result. This "win-win" stands in opposition to the traditional zero-sum solution requiring winners and losers, “all or nothing.” In contemporary design practice, the best way to achieve a PLUS-SUM solution is through close collaboration with clients, consultants, contractors and other specialists to develop an integrated and thoughtful response to complex design problems. Within this multi-disciplinary approach, a second interpretation might be the studio (SUM) and its collaborating entities (PLUS) which form and reform depending upon the project and requirements of the problem at hand.Internally, the studio is organized into teams that fluctuate depending on need and opportunity, but the work is always understood as collaborative in nature. This internal structure leads to another interpretation that acknowledges the formation, organization, and values of the practice; the team (PLUS) fluctuates and the constant is the studio's founder and design director, Martin Summers (SUM).
FS: What is "design" for you?
MS: Design is a combination of rational and irrational inspiration, reason and intuition, quantifiable and immeasurable. It requires a process through which one can work to evaluate a problem, ask better questions in this regard, and determine potential solutions that weigh a multitude of factors in a holistic solution. It is never fixed, never quite understandable, and always open for new discoveries. This is the fundamental struggle in design, people tend to look for simple answers or explanations when our reality is complex and enmeshed. In my work, I am not looking for a reductive solution, but a solution that opens up new potentials and reveals the layers of conceptual, performative, and cultural nuance that produces a project that is rich and layered. I consider my project to be a lot like a "choose your own adventure" book, that I loved reading as a child. It is not for me to tell you what to see and experience, but to provide clues and stimuli to engage all your senses in a process of discovery in three-dimensional space, to encourage your own creativity and challenge the way you see and experience space.
FS: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
MS: I love to design anything and everything. The more complex the issue, the more potential there is to discover a unique solution that synthesizes often contradictory conditions. It is there that I find the most satisfaction as the project is revealed through the design process itself, never known before it makes itself know, always in a state of becoming, a process of discovery.
FS: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
MS: A lobby for the renovation of an old theater.
FS: When do you feel the most creative?
MS: Late at night, unfortunately.
FS: What makes a design successful?
MS: When the solution adds value in ways that go above and beyond the initial design brief. The other way of stating this is when people see that the design works well but that there is more to grapple with in the solution than simply the functional requirements requested.
FS: When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
MS: The quality of the space created and how it challenges my own expectations in positive ways
FS: What are your suggestions to companies for working with a designer? How can companies select a good designer?
MS: Be open to the process. Design is not magic and it is not a formula, it is an open-ended process to understand opportunities and constraints. The best ideas require time to work through the problem and uncover previously hidden potentials which by their very nature are unknown in the beginning. Find someone who's values are in line with your values and see where the colaboration leads. Ideally it will be surprising and rewarding to all involved.
FS: Can you talk a little about your design process?
MS: I begin by gathering as much information about the problem as possible by looking at a broad range of issues that affect the project and problem. The projects start by investigating opportunities available within the site conditions while simultaneously generating formal and spatial ideas and evaluating those relative to programming adjacencies. We then develop strategies to maximize and rethink those conditions within a broader context of the networks, relationships, experience, massing, conceptual potency, and real estate value where the organizational and strategic thinking begin to shape the urban/architectural approach. This process translates from larger regional, city-scale network relationships down to material and programmatic relationships where we adjust and adapt to new knowledge gained via the iterative design process and reshape the project with ever increasing intelligence, speed, and precision. There are further discussions within the studio that contextualize this new knowledge in terms of geometry, form, gestalt theory and relationships, perception, pattern, structure. This discussion extends into issues regarding the construction where the architect’s internal knowledge of the problem, when combined with an adaptive and rapid design process, allows one to address time-sensitive decision making within the projects broader conceptual framework.
FS: Could you please share some pearls of wisdom for young designers? What are your suggestions to young, up and coming designers?
MS: Invest in yourself by working hard at all times, knowing that you can't always be "on." You go through cycles of productivity and rest, which is also a subconscious form of productivity. If you continually attempt to grow and improve, you will always be prepared for what is next.
FS: What is your "golden rule" in design?
MS: Work hard and pursue the ideas understanding that you are evolving with the work so you can't know what you are making ahead of time. If so, then it is not "designed."
FS: What skills are most important for a designer?
MS: Adaptability, flexibility and a desire to always improve and learn
FS: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
MS: Rhino, Grasshopper, Adobe Suite, Bentley Products, Autodesk Products, 3D printers, CNC's, pencil, and pen
FS: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
MS: Poorly. I am always looking to improve the solution and unwilling to stop short.
FS: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
MS: A combination of both
FS: How can people contact you?
MS: via PLUS-SUM Studio at www.plus-sum.com
FS: Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to interview you.
A’ Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers.
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