Professor Matt Ward

Staff details

Position Professor of Design
Department Design
Email m.ward (@gold.ac.uk)
Phone +44 (0)20 7919 7797
Professor Matt Ward

Matt is a Senior Lecturer in the Design Department.

His research spans a wide range of interests from speculative design to radical pedagogy. He’s a practicing designer, writer and founding member of DWFE; a post-disciplinary, semi-fictional design syndicate. DWFE’s work searches for meaning in the construction of the extraordinary; they design activities, objects and incidents to reconfigure people’s perceptions.

Matt holds three international patents on the work he did at NCR’s Advanced Research and Development Department on the emerging contexts of the Internet of Things and Urban Computing. Matt has been a research affiliate to MIT Media Lab and Interaction Design at The RCA. He consults for a range of organisations; Nokia, BERG, Dentsu and the Design Council. He lectures internationally about design, technology and education, writes a blog and takes a lot of photographs.

Publications and research outputs

Design

Loizeau, Jimmy and Ward, Matt. 2015. Putting the Rock back in Rhyl.

Show/Exhibition

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy; Božanić, Sara and Ružič, Mihaela. 2021. Disco School: Reimagining the future of Murska Sobota. In: "Disco School: Reimagining the future of Murska Sobota", Institute for Transmedia Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy; Božanić, Sara and Ružič, Mihaela. 2021. Disko School: Firminy. In: "My neighbourhood, my city", Cite le Corbusier, The Church of Saint-Pierre, Firminy, France, 15 - 24 October 2021.

Loizeau, Jimmy and Ward, Matt. 2021. Disco School: Murska Sobota Castle - MIKK. In: "Disco school: Reimagining the future of Murska Sobota", Park Theatre (Gledališče Park)/MIKK Gallery, Murska Sobota, Slovenia, 11 - 22 September 2021.

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy; Macdonald, Dash and Auger, James. 2019. Alternative Friends. In: "Reconstrained Futures @ BIO26, 26th Biennial of Design", Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy and Potter, Laura. 2012. Recreational Bombs; Milan = Boom. In: "Hacked – 100 hours of rebellious imagination", La Rinascente, Piazza Duomo, Italy.

Conference or Workshop Item

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy and Sully, Dean. 2021. 'Role of Creative Practice in Heritage Process: Speculative Pasts from Certain Futures. Past, Present and Future, Which Comes First?'. In: Critical Heritage Practice: Preferred Futures, Uncertain Presents and Speculative Pasts. The Max Planck Institute for the Advancement of Science, Germany 9 September 2021.

Ward, Matt and Thorne, Morgan JL. 2019. 'Bedtime Stories and Social Dreaming; new myths for a different tomorrow'. In: HyperWerk: How can we live together. Institute HyperWerk of the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Switzerland 9-10 November 2019.

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy; Macdonald, Dash and Auger, James. 2019. 'Sitspec: rewriting alternative futures'. In: Future Friends Conference. Maribor, Slovenia 14 - 18 April 2019.

Ward, Matt. 2019. 'Making it up as we go along; fiction, speculation and the edge of the imagination'. In: What’s Next: The Creative Spark. Mumbai, India 22-23 February 2019.

Ward, Matt. 2018. 'The Life and Death of Critical and Speculative Design: Post-Truth, Post-Capital and Post-Disciplinarity in Perilous Times'. In: Critical By Design?. Academy of Art and Design FHNW, Basel, Switzerland 17–18 May 2018.

Ward, Matt. 2011. 'Souvenirs from the Future: The Role of Image Making in Speculative and Critical Design'. In: The Second International Conference on the Image. San Sebastian, Spain.

Ward, Matt. 2011. 'The architecture of frivolity and mess'. In: Design principles and practices. Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.

Wilkie, Alex and Ward, Matt. 2009. 'Made in Criticalland: Designing Matters of Concern'. In: Networks of Design. Falmouth, United Kingdom.

Ward, Matt. 2009. 'The Architecture of Frivolity'. In: Interesting 09. London, United Kingdom.

Ward, Matt. 2008. 'The fate of things to come'. In: London calling. Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany.

Article

Sully, Dean; Ward, Matt and Loizeau, Jimmy. 2023. Putting the Illegal into heritage practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 29(12), pp. 1374-1390. ISSN 1352-7258

Ward, Matt and Loizeau, Jimmy. 2020. The Illegal Town Plan: Anecdotal Speculation for Coastal Futures. Temes de Disseny(36), pp. 90-113. ISSN 2604-9155

Ward, Matt. 2020. Mother Futures. Walker Reader: The Gradient: Memories from the Year 2030,

Ward, Matt. 2017. Jamming the Stupid Machine. Disegno(17), pp. 113-128. ISSN 2048-7770

Hall, Sean and Ward, Matt. 2010. Rethinking Drinking: A Proposal For a New English Pint Beer Glass. Things, pp. 46-49. ISSN 1356-921X

Ward, Matt. 2006. Designing a Critical Utopia: Facts, Futures and Fictions. Scroope: Cambridge Architectural Journal, 18, pp. 44-53. ISSN 09661026

Audio

Loizeau, Jimmy and Ward, Matt. 2021. Vö Fajna!.

Ward, Matt and Foster, Nick. 2021. ZTOPIA Feb 28- Colonizing Machine Learning, Feet Fetishes and Only GANs w/ Nick Foster and Matt Ward.

Loizeau, Jimmy and Ward, Matt. 2020. Keeping it Rhyl: Punk-Plan.

Book Section

Ward, Matt. 2022. A New Type of Design Education; Models, Materials and Futures. In: Gem Barton, ed. Experimental Realism: (design) fictions and futures. London: RIBA.

Ward, Matt. 2022. The life and death of Critical and Speculative Design; Post-Disciplinarity, Post-Truth, Post-Self and Post-Capital. In: Claudia Mareis; Moritz Greiner-Petter and Michael Renner, eds. Critical by Design? Genealogies, Practices, Positions. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, pp. 288-305. ISBN 9783837661040

Ward, Matt. 2021. A Practice of Hope, A Method of Action. In: Ivica Mitrović; James Auger; Julian Hanna and Ingi Helgason, eds. Beyond Speculative Design: Past - present - future. Split: SpeculativeEdu; Arts Academy, University of Split, pp. 166-200. ISBN 9789536617562

Ward, Matt. 2015. Rapid Prototyping Politics: Design and the De-material Turn. In: Wolfgang Jonas; Sarah Zerwas and Kristof von Anshelm, eds. Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser, pp. 227-245. ISBN 9783035606362

Ward, Matt. 2008. Resistance is futile: design for transformation. In: Rosario Hurtado and Roberto Feo, eds. Nowhere, now, here: investigating new lines of enquiry in contemporary design. Gijon, Spain: LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, pp. 134-139. ISBN 978-84-612-6674-6

Film/Video

Ward, Matt and Loizeau, Jimmy. 2019. Welcome to Rhyl.

Project

Ward, Matt; Loizeau, Jimmy; Ružič, Mihaela and Božanić, Sara. 2019 - 2021 Disco School: The Illegal Future Machine.

Ward, Matt and Loizeau, Jimmy. 2015 - 2021 The Illegal Town Plan.

Report

Ward, Matt and van Kranenberg, R.. 2006. RIFD: Frequency, standards, adoption and innovation. Technical Report. JISC, UK.

Other

NCR Limited 2008. European Patent EP 1085432 B1 Information retrieval and display. .

M. Waller and M. Ward 2006. Access to information networks. EP1267544.

M. Waller and M. Ward 2004. Method of interfacing with virtual objects on a map including items with machine-readable tags. 6690402.