Reference

YouGov & Kingston University London. (2022). Future Skills League Table 2022. Kingston University. https://www.kingston.ac.uk/aboutkingstonuniversity/future-skills/

About the Town House

RSD12-Kingston is hosted at the Town House, Kingston University’s landmark building on the Penrhyn Road Campus. The Town House is an inviting and informal space for gathering, socialising, and learning, with outdoor corridors and galleries with covered roofs. Although fundamentally a library with study nooks and bookable spaces, it is filled with light and activity, featuring cafés, outdoor spaces, and a roof terrace.

A few Town House facts

It won the 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, confirming it as Britain’s best new building.

The building was named the winner of the 2022 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award, recognised as the highest accolade in European architecture. Town House is one of only three UK projects ever to have won the prestigious European Union prize. Its success also marks the first time a university building has won the award.

Town House was the recipient of a prestigious RIBA London Region Award, a 2021 Civic Trust Award, runner up in the Guardian University Awards 2020 and a finalist in the NLA London Awards and Constructing Excellence SECBE Awards.

The project to deliver Town House began with a RIBA design competition in 2013, which was won by RIBA Gold Medal-winning Grafton Architects, who have a reputation for designing thoughtful, beautifully detailed buildings.

Adapted from the webpage Kingston U Town House

CONTEXT

AI is trending as a disruptive force in the tangle of emerging technologies, from the familiar—IoT, AR, VR, 5G, and blockchain—to the recondite—nanotechnology, biotechnology, DNA sequencing, and quantum computing. This cyber & digital symposium represents research related to design and technology, for instance, tensions between ethics and design, futuring and defuturing, security and innovation, and so on, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the space between and across cyber security and design.

SUNDAY, OCT 8

The Sunday programme is active and in-person, with a focus on sessions devoted to cybernetics and features faculty-led projects in cyber & digital.

Monday, Oct 9

Monday is an open invitation to listen to authors’ presentations of 12 (to be confirmed) papers being published in Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking & Design, RSD12. Papers will be video streamed at the Town House, and an onsite moderator will add your questions to the Q&A.

CYBER CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE and Cyber and Digital Innovation Hub

Cyber security is a global challenge that impacts societies, national security, critical infrastructure and the global economy.

The Centre’s aim is to collaboratively establish nationally recognised standards of excellence in cyber security education, with Government and other academic institutions. Building on a GCHQ-certified masters programme and a strong research base, the Centre will deliver a state-of-the-art cyber security education environment specialising in live threats intelligence simulations and establishing long-term proactive partnerships with industry, Government, local communities—to change the cybersecurity culture.

The University’s planned new Cyber and Digital Innovation Hub will build on and develop the activities of the Cyber Centre of Excellence, bringing together the University and business and industry to develop ideas and solve problems in the fields of cyber security and digital innovation. We will grow a network of companies and organisations, local and global, and develop collaborative business partnerships.

Kingston University generates ideas, knowledge and expertise that it develops and shares with others. Knowledge exchange and professional practice are at the heart of our identity. We will debate and have impact where the knowledge we produce and the expertise we expound is credible and authoritative. We will direct support to existing areas that are world-class and bring together expertise and innovation in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary ways to address existing and emerging issues.

From the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and the Environment
Cyber Centre of Excellence webpage.

School of Design

We believe that tomorrow’s designers need to be able to think critically and act practically; they are required to be contextually insightful and creative, and therefore well placed to meet new challenges in a strategic, ambitious and perhaps entrepreneurial manner … we believe inter-disciplinary excellence and knowledge are key to the development of confident, agile, innovative and creative contemporary design practitioners meeting and setting the challenges for society and industry. Thinking and doing underpin design practice across the school and supports students and staff as their work traverses disciplines and subjects in hybrid spaces defining the emerging roles and responsibilities for designers of the future.

We aspire to design practice that is vested with personality, purpose and vision resulting from an appetite for life and a desire to make a difference. As a school we aim to graduate creative and innovative designers and researchers who are clearly engaging in and aware of ethical, moral, social and environmental responsibilities, as 21st century citizens.

From the Schools at Kingston School of Art webpage.