My alumni story: Chloe talks furniture and product design, sustainability, and her family’s historic link to our Nottingham School of Art & Design
Today, Chloe Bullock runs a successful interior design company in Brighton. But back in the early nineties, she was an eager undergraduate, getting her first taste of what was to become a lifelong commitment to working in furniture and product design.
By John Anderson | Published on 19 July 2024
Categories: Alumni; School of Art & Design;
It’s especially fitting that Chloe studied in our Waverley building – just as her Grandmother has studied fashion there, some sixty years earlier. We caught up with Chloe to find out about her many achievements since.
Q: You studied for a BA in Furniture and Product Design back in 1993. What made you choose that course?
A: It had the reputation for being the best industrial furniture design course and was led by a really well-respected furniture designer, Brian Long.
Q: How did it prepare you for what you're doing today?
A: I learned everything from welding, woodwork, engineering, to upholstery. We sketched and draughted by hand. It was the dawn of CAD and digital graphics and we were just starting to use computers. I still use these skills every day. I probably ought to have done the Interior Design course as originally intended but when I visited the open day – I just loved to make things so applied for Furniture Design instead. Product Design was later added to our course.
Q: What are the standout memories for you as a student studying in our Waverley building?
A: A field trip to Glasgow for the City of Culture in 1990, being selected to go to New Designers (it was quite a new show then!) and winning a Consumer Project Design award (Worshipful Company of Haberdashers).
Q: You mentioned that a relative also studied in the same building many years ago?
A: Yes, my grandmother, Winifred Beard (then Day), studied in the Waverley building back in the 1930s, at the Nottingham School of Art as it was called then.
Q: What are you doing now?
A: I'm a sole practitioner interior designer running Materialise Interiors in Brighton. Mainly working for small business and commercial clients. Always working with a lessened impact whether or not it's part of the client brief!
Q: You mention a fellow alum, Joey Pringle - did you study here at the same time, and can you tell us a little more about the benefits of working with sustainable materials like MIRUM®?
A: I am known as a vegan interior designer because I would rather avoid the use of animals in my work. I do this for lots of reasons and there's a whole world of next generation regenerative materials. I want to avoid fossil fuels and toxic chemicals which are often present in these seemingly 'natural' materials.
Joey and I found each other through LinkedIn - we are both advocates of finding positive, regenerative alternatives to negatively impacting animal leather. The fashion and automotive industries are way ahead of interior design in terms of material advances and Joey had taken the same course as me (but many years later!) and evolved into luggage and bag design. He now runs his own really successful company called Veshin and they specialise in working with innovative alternative leather materials like MIRUM® which are biobased and regenerative. They make bags for many of the high end luxury companies. It's been great to find someone else who took the same course!
Q: You've written a book, which seems to have a real focus on sustainability - can you explain where your passion for that comes from?
A: Fortunately, my education continued after Trent, as my second job was as a retail designer for The Body Shop International where I learnt about sustainable design and ethical business. That has been a big influence on my work today. RIBA Publishing approached me to write for them on sustainable interior design. Launched this Spring, Sustainable Interior Design covers various approaches to a sustainable interior using examples I've researched from around the world. I recently donated a copy to the NTU Library – it feels brilliant to be able to share my own learnings three decades after leaving university and help fellow designers work more consciously of the very many negative impacts our industry has.
Find out more about Chloe's book, Sustainable Interior Design
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