Parnham College – education in design, craftsmanship and business
John Makepeace’s interest in wood, craftsmanship and furniture design began at a young age, with early professional recognition leading to a role as design consultant for the All India Handicraft Board, a founding member of the Crafts Council in the UK. But this experience also revealed to Makepeace that formal design education too often failed to connect the design and craft components of furniture-making with equally important manufacturing and business considerations.
With a view to delivering a more holistic education programme, Makepeace acquired Parnham House in Dorset in 1976 and set up Parnham College alongside his own furniture studios.
Idea
Parnham College would provide an integrated education for furniture designers and makers going into business. Makepeace believed that such a college could be a ‘radical concept that addressed the tendency in most education to isolate design from production and business’.
The residential course provided education and training in the complementary disciplines of design, craftsmanship and business management. As an independent college Parnham was able to set its own high standards of selection and teaching and it also benefitted from a large number of visiting professional designers, architects, manufacturers, marketing specialists, actors, photographers and journalists.
Alongside the education programme the college hosted exhibitions, conferences and lectures on a wide range of arts and design subjects that were accessible by both students and the public.
Another important issue for Makepeace was the need to reconnect design and production with the forestry industry. So in 1982 the Parnham Trust bought Hooke Park, a 350-acre conifer and broad-leaved forest, and used it to research and demonstrate how small-diameter crops can be used in construction, with revenue from their sale helping to fund the growing costs of forest management.
Hooke training centre
Impact
Parnham College very quickly developed an international reputation as the best design and business education establishment of its kind in the world, spawning similar institutions in Scotland, Ireland, Australia and the US. It contributed significantly to a revival of the crafts in Britain and overseas, particularly in design and furniture-making, and its world-renowned alumni include Konstantin Grcic, Rod Wales, Sean Sutcliffe, Mark Boddington and David Linley.
In 2000, after 24 years of delivering a combined education in design, craft, manufacturing and business, Parnham College moved to Hooke Park. Shortly afterwards, the college was amalgamated into the Architectural Association.
According to Frank Peters, chief executive of the Chartered Society of Designers, Makepeace’s ‘contribution to design education cannot be overstated’, thanks in large part to the programme delivered at Parnham College.
Similarly, Makepeace’s multidisciplinary research into the use of small-diameter forest crops – and their application in the college campus build in Hooke Park – provided inspiration for other buildings and technologies, including Waterloo International Station, The Savill Building and the Japan Pavilion for Expo 2000.