Design as Practice & Enquiry
An interview with Jane Worthington
How would you describe your practice today?
I work as both a designer and an artist. I still love designing objects that people live with and use, but I'm also interested in investigating design itself through sculpture. They are two different directions, but they come from the same way of thinking.
You often speak about working
“through objects.” What does that mean
in practical terms?
Objects allow me to test ideas physically. Through proportion, weight, material and tension, I can explore how something sits in the world and how we respond to it over time.
Your work questions design and reflects through art. Why is that position important to you?
I’ve always been interested in questioning what design can do beyond solving practical problems. Function is essential, but it isn't the only reason we connect with objects. I'm interested in those other qualities, and how they influence the way we live and experience our surroundings.
Why is it important to you to continue working as a designer alongside your sculptural practice?
Designing is fundamental to who I am and how I think. I continue to create functional work because I believe in the importance of design and its ability to shape our relationship with objects and space. My sculptural enquiry draws on the knowledge developed through this practice, but the two directions have their own purpose.
There is a recurring geometry in your sculptures, particularly the circular void. Why do you return to the same formal language?
I’m not trying to invent a completely new form with every work. The repetition is important. I work with a rigorous geometric structure and the circular void, then explore what happens when that same formal system is developed through different materials, processes and scales.
For me, that repetition is part of the method. The enquiry comes first: I remove the requirement to function while retaining the knowledge, processes and precision of design. The sculptural forms are the result of that enquiry. Working repeatedly with a defined formal language allows me to investigate what changes, and what remains.
Your work involves many specialists and processes. How do you maintain authorship within that?
Authorship is not about making everything yourself. It’s about holding the line, proportion, surface, and tension, through every stage. The process is distributed. The expertise is shared. The direction remains mine.
What does a project look like from first idea to final object?
It usually begins with a first sense of form, often in clay, form without precision, something I don’t fully understand yet. Then it moves through translation: CAD, model, machining, mould, finishing. Each step sharpens the intention rather than diluting it.
You describe your process as Post-Industrial. What changes compared to traditional industrial design?
Post-Industrial Design is not a rejection of industry, but a recalibration of it. Within my design practice I work with design-conscious manufacturers who produce with care rather than scale. The focus shifts from quantity to precision, from efficiency to attention.
Alongside that, in my sculptural work, what I call Art After Industry, I use the same tools of industry outside of function to construct objects of reflection. The tools remain the same. What they are used for changes.
You’ve also been teaching design for many years. How does that relate
to your practice?
My approach to education comes from the same critical understanding of design that informs my practice. I am interested in developing judgement, encouraging students to question conventions and understand why something should exist.
At the Academy of Architecture in Maastricht, I was invited to develop a new educational programme, establishing its intellectual direction and curriculum through a four-year development and accreditation process. That experience allowed me to extend my thinking about design into the structure of education itself.
You’ve described your work as a response to the age of excess. What do you mean by that?
We’ve produced more objects than we can meaningfully relate to. I’ve been part of that system. So my question shifted from “what do we need?” to include “what is worth keeping?” My work sits in that shift.
How has your thinking about design changed over the years?
I've become more selective. Earlier in my career, I was very involved in the processes and possibilities of industrial production. Today, I'm more interested in understanding why something deserves to be made in the first place.
Do you think design has globalised through major design brands?
Yes. Design has become globally consistent. The question now is how to remain specific within that.
What do you think design has lost, and what can it regain?
It lost attention. It can regain depth, through fewer, more considered objects.
Do you agree with the idea that
design is “dead”?
No. It’s just no longer where it used to be.
Can you explain what
you mean by that?
Design has become too closely associated with production, branding and constant novelty, but that's only one part of it. Design still has an extraordinary capacity to question, change and improve how we live.
Your work often feels architectural. What is your relationship to architecture?
I see objects as compressed architectures. They organise space, even at a smaller scale.
Why are materials like chrome,
glass, lacquer, or soft upholstery important in your work?
They allow contrast. Hard with soft. Precision with tactility. That tension is where the work sits.
Colour also plays a role in your work.
How do you approach it?
Colour is emotion and it allows a piece to extend across a palette, to exist in different readings without changing its structure. But it’s never essential. Each object is designed to hold in its pure form, in wood, stone, or a more nuanced finish. Colour is an addition, not a dependency.
Is that the same for your
sculptural work?
No. There, colour is integrated into the object. It operates through light and reflection, not as a separate layer.
There is often a tension between precision and softness, is this intentional
Yes. Without that tension, the object becomes either too technical or too passive.
What does removing function reveal in that piece?
It makes me realise how much of our relationship with objects goes beyond their use. With my sculptural work I'm interested in what happens psychologically when you encounter something that draws you towards it, but doesn't tell you what it's for.
Do you consider yourself a designer, an artist, or something else?
Both. I've never felt that I need to choose between them. I design objects for use, and through sculpture I can ask questions of design that I couldn't ask in the same way through a functional object.
What distinguishes Art After Industry from bringing a design aesthetic into sculpture?
I'm not interested in making sculpture that simply looks designed or industrial. What I bring into the work is the knowledge and processes I've developed through design. That's quite different. The enquiry happens through that knowledge, rather than through adopting a particular aesthetic.
How should galleries or collectors understand your work?
I'd like people to approach the sculptures without feeling they need to understand the processes behind them first. The thinking matters enormously to me, but ultimately the work has to communicate through the experience of encountering it.
Where do you see your work developing in the coming years?
I'd like to develop larger, more spatial sculptures and explore what happens when the work begins to engage with architecture on a different scale.
At the same time, I want to continue creating designs with manufacturers who share my approach to materials, construction and making. Both directions are important to me.
What kind of objects do you think will matter in the future?
The ones people don’t want to replace.
What is design, to you, now?
For me it is a way of thinking made visible.