Iconic product and furniture designer Terence Woodgate sits down with darc’s editor Sarah Cullen to chat about his career, design inspirations, and memorable collections that he has created over the last 21 years as an official Royal Designer for Industry.

Terence Woodgate is a well-respected British industrial designer who obtained Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) status in 2003. However, being a furniture and product designer was not on his initial career path.

Speaking with Sarah Cullen, she discovers more about the designer’s past, creative influences, and future endeavors.

Woodgate grew up in the beautiful Parliament Hill area in Highgate, London. Here, he attended the Gospel Oak primary school where he majored in art. At the end of his primary education, he failed his 11+ exams and went on to attend Holloway Comprehensive School, which upon reflection was something he sees as a positive outcome: “It was probably for the best as I would not have enjoyed grammar school”. For context, secondary modern schools were a type of secondary school that existed throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 1944 until the 1970s under the Tripartite System. Secondary modern schools were designed for most pupils between the ages 11 and 15; those who achieved the highest scores in the 11+ were allowed to go to a selective grammar school, which offered education beyond 15. It wasn’t until a little later in life in his 30s that Woodgate was diagnosed with Dyslexia, which could have been a possible influencing factor on his educational direction.

Post secondary school, Woodgate went on to study engineering at Westminster College before beginning work as a petrochemical design engineer in Belgium, creating oil rigs and nuclear power plants. “While in Belgium, I visited an exhibition on The Bauhaus at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which had a massive influence on me. The Grand Comfort chair by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, blew me away. The idea of having an exterior structure in polished steel tube, holding soft leather cushions was exciting. It was totally different from what I grew up with and I wanted to create work like that myself. Also, the Lights by Walter Gropius were wonderful, stunning and still relevant today.

“Visiting an art gallery continues to have the same effect on me; after a while I want to run back to the studio and create new work!”

Following his stroke of inspiration attending art galleries in Belgium, in the mid-1980s Woodgate retrained as a furniture designer at the London Guildhall University before opening his own studio in East Sussex, UK, 1988.

Since then, blending his technical engineering training with his appreciation for refined aesthetics, Woodgate has established himself as a contemporary designer that describes his aesthetic as “modernist/minimal”. He adds: “I am more interested in subtraction than addition. I don’t add decoration for the sake of decoration, instead preferring to focus on form and texture.

“[When it comes to designing] influences are everywhere for me. When offering advice to design students, I always encourage them to look outside their chosen discipline for inspiration, e.g., architecture, jewellery, racing cars, art. For me, art is probably the most important influence.”

As his studio began to grow, so did the recognition for his designs and his collection of accolades. A mere 15 years after establishing Studio Woodgate, in 2003 he was awarded his RDI as well as the German Red Dot ‘Best of the Best’ Award, IF Ecology Award, and Observer/Elle Decoration Design Award for Furniture. Not long after, in 2008 he also won the Wallpaper* Magazine Design Award.

Over the years, Woodgate’s portfolio of clients has also grown to include brands such as Case, Concord Lighting, Established & Sons, Objekten, Punt Mobles, RVB and SCP. Examples of his work are now held in private and permanent collections such as the Museu d’Arts Decoratives, Barcelona, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 

Speaking of some of his most notable moments in his career to date, Woodgate says: “I designed several lights for Concord Lighting that were all speculative, i.e. not commissioned. Notably, Infinite and LED 150 were significant designs. Infinite was a low voltage collection with straight and curved track structures where fittings could be added to the top and bottom. It won various important design awards including the German Red Dot ‘Best of the Best’.”

Ahead of the curve with project circularity, Woodgate’s LED 150 was designed with longevity and flexibility in mind. “LED 150 was a downlight where LED was an acronym for Low Energy Downlight, long before LED light sources were around. It was a holistic design where I focused on benefits for everyone involved be they architects, specifiers, installers, maintenance, or end user. It was flexible in that it could be specified in the knowledge that if the building requirements changed so could the downlight system in terms of optics and aesthetics.  The product lit many large projects such as the Petronas Twin Towers and some international airports.

“I would also say my Solid collection for Case is one that I consider notable. The design has now evolved to be portable, which offers wonderful user flexibility.”

When it comes to his approach to designing lighting, Woodgate explains that within all design fields, whether that’s furniture or lighting fixtures, there are particular constraints that need to be considered.

“You need to identify what information you need to start work.  When designing an architectural light fitting, you are designing a machine that provides light. Decorative lighting is more about saying ‘look at me’ rather than ‘look at what I do’. And both are valid.

“Lighting can turn a space into something wonderful, be it warm and welcoming like enjoying a whiskey by a log fire, or it can enliven the space and the people within it like a fresh walk in the alps. It can also tell a story and provide a narrative.

“For me, good product design is refinement and engineering beauty either in the design itself or in the effect. It’s the ambiance it produces.”

Looking at the relationship between architectural and decorative lighting, he believes “each has a definitive role to play”.  He continues: “Personally, I love the technical challenges of architectural lighting, and I love the freedom/liberty of decorative lighting.”

When it comes to challenges within design, Woodgate is self-proclaimed impatient by nature, stating that the time it takes between design concept to production and finally to reward is the most frustrating part about working in the world of design.

Speaking of one of the best developments in the industry, like many designers who work with lighting, he claims it is the revolutionary introduction of LEDs. “[They] are amazing and have changed the industry. The energy saving aspects and the fact that they are emitting light at such low operating temperatures is excellent. Tuneable white light LEDs are particularly fantastic, but personally, I am not a fan of colour changing LEDs.”

One of Woodgate’s long-standing brand partnerships is with Case, a British furniture, lighting, and home accessories brand established in 2006 by British designer Paul Newman.

“I have known and respected Case for many years and the team has impressed me with their energy and enthusiasm. They have grown and are now a successful international producer with an intention to expand its decorative lighting. Case commissioned me to design a collection of floor and table lights, which is called Soft, due to its soft form of the traditional tapered shade. Made in Poland in mouthblown, three ply opal glass, it provides a beautiful, soft ambient light.”

The Soft collection’s elegant, rounded conic glass shade takes the centre stage, which is acid-etched to produce a diffused, gentle light. With a three-step touch control to dim the light, the collection is versatile and suitable for use in residential, office and commercial environments.

“Working with light is always an exciting experience, because you never really know light and how it will perform.”

What can we expect from the designer next? A new collection of wall lights appears to be on the horizon… “The wall lights are currently a speculative design without a manufacturer in mind; it is one of those designs that has been on my board for a while. As I am now living in Girona, I think I would like to approach a Spanish brand.”

www.studiowoodgate.com