10 best designs of 2012-2013 awards for the Associate Parliamentary Design & Innovation Group

As a practice, produces innovation and transformation across many fields of application, from tangible ‘stuff’ to intangible concepts and experiences. Its protean nature takes it into all sorts of interesting places.
The Associate Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group believes that design talent underpins Britain’s entrepreneurial and inventive culture, but too often it is the unsung hero of the economy and society.
In this book we make amends, and celebrate some of the most interesting achievements and projects from the world of design over the last twelve months.

10 of the best Design 12/13
4 Matt Durran’s glass moulds for the Royal Free Hospital in London exemplify the real-world application of craft processes and a specialist knowledge of material.
The polymer used to create the noses was developed at the
Royal Free Hospital and is a global first. It is only the second synthetic material developed in the last forty years that has been accepted and not rejected within the human body. Experiments with previous mould materials had produced adverse reactions with the polymer. And so in 2010 Durran was approached by PhD student Lola Oseni to create a mould from glass, an inert material that can be sterilised and also allow, through its translucency, the observation of cell growth.

Matt Durran is a glass maker with over 20 years’ experience, and by utilising his deep understanding of the medium, he successfully created a mould by slumping hot glass over a nose ‘form’ made of plaster and quartz. This glass mould was then filled with the polymer eventually providing the scaffold for the tissue-engineering process to take place in a bio-reactor. In 2011 Durran received his first real-world nose commission and is now extending the process to other parts of the body.
Design and Medicine
Matt Durran’s Glass Nose
Moulds
Nominated by the Crafts Council
For further information, please contact
Jocelyn Bailey, APDIG Secretariat
Associate Parliamentary Design & Innovation Group
Policy Connect
CAN Mezzanine
32-36 Loman Street
UK-London SE1 0EH
+44 (0)20-72028588
jocelyn.bailey@policyconnect.org.uk
www.policyconnect.org.uk

Matt Duran was also awarded at The International Film Festival on Clay and Glass in Montpellier, France, 2012

Every two years since 1998, the International Film Festival on Clay and Glass
displays a selection of about thirty films, documentaries, fictions, animation films. The programme featured 25 films from 11 different countries - China, Spain, the United States, France, Poland, Belgium, Great Britain, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands and Australia – which enchanted the 1,700 festival-goers.
The Glass Award
The Blessed Factory, documentary by Rod Morris and Matt Duran to view excerpts of the film go to www.roadfactoryfilms.co.uk
www.mattdurran.com