030 REPORTER


PROFILE Tim Pyne


The self-described ‘half architect, half ad man’ discusses the origins of 100% Design and his most recent project, a forum where the property world swaps ideas on cutting carbon emissions


WORDS BY EMILY MARTIN


This image m-house (pronounced ‘mouse’) was a 2002 prefab project. It was over 1,000ft2


of


contemporary house or ofice manufactured under controlled factory conditions, which guaranteed both quality of build and delivery time. It arrived in two pieces, each 3m wide, which were then joined together on site, which took about a day.


Below left Tim Pyne


LAST SUMMER, an archive FX front cover was unearthed. It was from the April 1999 issue and, like lifting a lid from a time capsule, it showcased a different magazine and industry during very different times (and, I might add, a different editorial staff). The cover features architect Tim Pyne, among other male designers, recreating Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland nude album cover at the time Pyne was finishing his exhibition work at the very much hyped Millennium Dome. 100% Design, which he had helped create in 1993, was also entering its sixth year. ‘That was the way it was,’ he says of a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ period. ‘We were in Shoreditch having the time of our lives.’ Meet Pyne and you’ll quickly realise he


isn’t your typical architect. A graduate from the Liverpool School of Architecture, he describes himself as half architect, half ad man. He is the founding director of Footprint+, the UK property event for a zero-carbon future. But his CV also


includes being founding creative director at both 100% Design and Detail in the UK, Tokyo and Moscow, and his company, Work, through which Pyne designed some £50m worth of the Millennium Dome interior, winning RIBA awards for two of the four zones created. He has also worked as creative director to the London Boat Show, the London Motor Show, the Blenheim Fashion Group and DMG Worldwide. He designed London Fashion Week for a period and launched Concept House at The Ideal Home Show, and was a founding partner of the Vamp creative event and party organisers. Before that he worked as an associate at Jasper Jacob Associates, running several large private and lottery-funded museum and visitor attraction projects. ‘Although I did architecture I was very


interested in communication,’ he explains. ‘I got really interested in how people tell stories [and] the delivery of people who could actually capture an audience. So I spent a lot of time watching people in meetings and some of them could just hold the room.’ He describes exhibitions as a cross


between advertising and architecture and the sector suited him well – each exhibition is designed to tell a story while essentially setting a built advertisement. Landing the 100% Design job, Pyne recalls putting on a show like no other, and describing the market as ‘shabby chic’ as opposed to contemporary. As he saw it, the way to set up a new show promoting contemporary furniture was to create the ‘biggest party in London’. ‘Let’s put a big bar in the middle and make it


into a party,’ he says of his intention at the time, ‘because the other thing was that designers didn’t used to go to shows. They used to sit in their ofices and wait for salespeople to come


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