Chris Rose is known both for his work in arts-science-design collaborations and for his leadership of one of the UK’s best known multidisciplinary design programs, Three-Dimensional Design and Materials Practice, with courses at the University of Brighton, England from 1993–2009. He is currently involved in a number of US, UK and European research initiatives including supervising practice-based PhD and Masters thesis work in art and design, specifically furniture and industrial design, graphic design, digital media, architecture and glass. He was invited together with other arts and sciences collaborators to contribute an installation to the Royal Society of Science 350th anniversary events on London’s South Bank in 2010. Current collaborations continue with meteorology and data representation (Universities of Brighton and Reading, UK) visual perception (Institute of Brain Sciences, Brown University) and the Engineering, Social Justice and Peace network (ESJP).

Rose is engagement coordinator for NSF-funded research at RISD. The National Science Foundation presently funds a five-year program to support interdisciplinary teaching and research known as EPSCoR, the Experimental Program for Competitive Research.

Rose studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Central School of Art, London and earned his Master’s degree in Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art. During his early furniture and interior consultancy design career he was a member of the UK Crafts Council Index of Selected Makers and a recipient of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers Guild award. For five years he and UK furniture artist Fred Baier shared studio design consultancy Baier-Rose Design, and Rose subsequently worked with Pearl Dot Furniture in London. He was invited to manage part of the independent Parnham Studio Furniture program established by John Makepeace, and later the multidisciplinary arts and design program at the University of Brighton, where he continued to broaden the academic connections between research, practice and the working links with materials science, art-science collaboration and international cross-border projects. These included one of the first European exchange MA programs with Eastern Europe, sustainable transportation on the London-Paris Avenue Verte and the first European design competition for composite materials with ESCM (European Society for Composite Materials). At Brighton, in addition to supervising practice-based PhD studies, he created teaching and learning grant-aided projects at the forefront of European developments focusing upon the internationalization of the curriculum. These included Design and Traditional Indian Manufacturing and Chair Design and Biomechanics, which was supported by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Design. He contributed to publications reflecting the center’s work with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art, including Museums and Design Education; Looking to Learn, Learning to See (Cook, Reynolds, Speight, Ashgate 2010) and Design Education; Learning, Teaching and Researching Through Design (P. Lyon, Gower 2011).

Information about Rose’s research and publications including the 2006 Five Essays on Design (with illustrations by George Hardie) and Light and Materiality can be found at http://cjvrose.com/.

Academic research/areas of interest

• Furniture Design
• Materials
• Drawing, Cognition and Design
• Science-Art-Design connections
• Sound