Material-led Design Processes: Sustainable Set Design At Any Scale

Session

Material-led Design Processes: Sustainable Set Design at Any Scale

Weds

This talk explores the possibilities, challenges and successes of designing for immersive without costing the planet. Alice’s work as a production designer spans theatre, arts and commercial sectors, and this talk considers the opportunities and systemic shortfallings within this industry from the perspective of a designer and maker.

Her design approach adopts a material-led approach, which demands an ideological shift at the earliest stages of conceptualising design. Experience makers may come to acknowledge how the material choices we make for the physical objects and environments we fabricate not only register in the bodied experience of their audiences, but also signify the stories of their origin and future.

Alice Helps

Alice Helps Design

Alice works internationally designing large scale immersive sets and installations. With twenty years’ experience designing for theatre, arts and experiential sectors, Alice brings ambitious projects to life from conception to delivery through detailed world-building, creating interactive and narrative material environments for live audiences.

Her recent theatre designs include Storehouse (Sage & Jester, London, 2025) Lost Origin (Almeida Theatre/ Factory 42, Hoxton Docks, 2020), and SOMNAI (Dot dot dot, London, 2018) and she has designed experiences for brands including Google, Lego, Chanel, Airbnb and H&M.

Alice regularly collaborates with interdisciplinary specialists including clinicians and social science researchers (King’s College London), paleontologists (Natural History Museum, London), roboticists (Science Museum, London), and creative technologists working in XR and live interactive projections, to develop techniques that enhance physical and digital integration. She recently appeared as a speaker at SXSW, Texas, where she shared her insights working in this rapidly expanding field.

Alice has a PhD in Scenography which explores embodied experience of touch and its connective, emotive potential in immersive scenographic design. She guest lectures at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and University of the Arts and University of the Arts, London.

https://alicehelpsdesign.org/

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