【Lecturer Profile】
Julia Cassim
Project Professor, KYOTO Design Lab, Kyoto Institute of Technology. Julia studied art in both England and Japan, and is a leading international authority in the field of Inclusive Design, with not only practical experience but an extensive collection of writings on the subject. While an art columnist for The Japan Times from 1984 to 1999, she also planned several award-winning art exhibitions intended for the visually impaired. In 2000, she began the “Challenge Workshops” program at the Royal College of Art in London, teaming professional designers with disabled and elderly people to create a comprehensive and cooperative design process which aimed to improve and revolutionize the standards for design. The results of this program became the subject of a 2010 exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Also in 2010, she was selected for Design Week’s Hot 50 list of people who had most influenced the design world. When Julia joined Kyoto Institute of Technology as a professor in 2014, she was tasked with the establishment of “KYOTO Design Lab,” a center for interdisciplinary design and innovation. Combining science with design, two of KYOTO D-Lab’s projects won awards at the Dutch Design Awards in 2016, and another project won the “Best Idea” prize at the 2019 Copenhagen Fashion Film Festival. The Lab’s latest project, “Alternative Futures: contemporary design responses to the 300 year Tango chirimen tradition,” was conducted from 2020 to 2021; three of the commissioned works won separate prizes, including the Red Dot Design Award 2020 in the Design Concept category.
KYOTO D-Lab