032 REPORTER


Left The Millennium Dome’s Living Island Zone, which was set in Britain’s seaside. The idea came from the Paul Theroux novel Kingdom by the Sea, where he described how island nations throw their rubbish towards the coast


Below left Footprint+ is the UK property event for a zero-carbon future


and sell to them… It [will be] the “Design Party”, and then while they’re getting drunk at the bar, they’ll be wandering around and they’ll see the exhibition stands and they’ll start to see contemporary furniture.’ In 1993, 100% Design was launched and by


its second year it was seeing visitor numbers at around 25,000. It was a fresh and exciting approach to working in the design industry that linked design, work and a huge social event


together in one place, which proved particularly attractive to cash-strapped young designers. ‘They were people like Michael Young [among others] – all these people that I now see in the Design Museum as being the doyens of design,’ says Pyne, who gave them exhibition space in return for exhibition design: ‘They were working out of their mum’s living rooms, and so they all came in and made stuff for the show. We gave them a showcase [which launched careers], so it was a really, really rewarding. Probably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, actually, is to provide that showcase.’ A sailing trip, a family, and a move


to St Lucia followed over the next ten years. Before moving back to the UK Pyne survived Hurricane Maria, a deadly category 5 storm that devastated parts of the Caribbean in September 2017. He moved to Hove; the pandemic hit shortly afterwards, while Pyne was in the throes of establishing Footprint+, with its focus on reducing carbon within the property and interior sectors.


‘I ended up going to a couple of meetings with some architects who said, “oh, we’re trying to reduce our carbon footprint of our buildings, but we don’t really know how we’re doing it, how to do it”,’ he says. ‘But at the


same time, they were buying tickets to go to MIPIM. I worked out it was 65,000 tons of carbon to fly the UK property industry down to the Mediterranean to talk to each other. So I said, “OK, well, let’s do it on the lawn in Hove. Let’s build a big marquee like we did 100% Design. Let’s make it into the party… and let’s find the cleverest people in the UK to come and tell the property industry how to reduce its carbon footprint”.’


And Pyne did so with great success, with


the event having to move to a new home in Old Billingsgate to be among the big decision makers. At the next event, in May 2025, themes and issues around construction and interiors waste – and its effective reuse options – will continue to dominate. While a far cry from the partying, ‘rock ‘n’


roll’ days of nude magazine covers – which I can’t deny is a relief – Pyne, nevertheless, as an architect and ‘ad man’ knows how to bring an industry crowd together. ‘I wouldn’t even know how to start designing a building like Richard Rodgers has just done in the middle of London!’ he muses. ‘But what I can do is go and talk to a client and come up with an idea for them and build it. And it’s there for as long as it needs to be, to tell the story. Then it all disappears again.’


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