Mike Thompson

About
Mike Thompson's work explores both old and new technologies in order to generate fresh relationships between function and behaviour, questioning common codes of conduct. His aim is to create a body of work blending his research based design approach with an interest in current issues and technology to reflect and comment upon society both in the present and the future. Mike believes in design with a conscience – "designers should be aware of the world around them and consider the impact of design looking to the future." As such his work touches upon issues such as sustainability, biotechnology and psychology. Mike believes in strong research based practice and design solutions. His approach is to create deep, methodical research in order to find fresh angles for problem solving resulting in new, unforeseen processes, and innovative design outcomes.

After graduating from the IM Masters course at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2009, Mike set up his own studio focusing upon design and future thinking. His work has been widely publicised in both the design and popular press including magazines such as Wired, Frame, Domus and ICON and exhibited worldwide including at the Milano Salone del Mobile, St Etienne Biennale Internationale Design 2010, the Science Gallery, Dublin, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and at Talk To Me at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2011, Mike was awarded the Designers and Artists for Genomics Award for the project proposal Aqua Vita, a collaboration with Susana Cámara Leret and the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre. Whilst much of Mike's work is self-initiated he also applies his design approach to industry sponsored research and commercial projects. From May 2011 to April 2012 Mike was [the first] Research Associate on the CRISP programme at Design Academy Eindhoven. The GRIP project, of which Mike was a team member, was a collaboration between Design Academy Eindhoven, the Technical Universities Eindhoven and Delft, and Philips Design, working on the development of a flexible Product-Service System for Work-Related Stress. Mike currently works from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, while he also coaches in the Next Nature Programme in the Department of Industrial Design at Technical University Eindhoven.

Download CV